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Structural biology

Proteins downhill all the way

The hundreds of hydrogen atoms in a protein can be used as reporters to describe how the protein folds into and out of shape. The results challenge the dogma that this is always an all-or-nothing process.

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Figure 1: An energy landscape for the folding of the all-helical protein BBL.

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Kelly, J. Proteins downhill all the way. Nature 442, 255–256 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/442255a

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