Thermodynamics and Kinetics of Polypeptide Chain Folding

Abstract

Having thus far considered only complete structures we will now discuss how these structures form spontaneously during or after synthesis of the polypeptide chains. Although some aspects of the folding process can be described by equilibrium thermodynamics, this description is not detailed enough. If one wants to elucidate the correlation between amino acid sequence and three-dimensional structure the folding kinetics must also be understood. In the following, experimental and theoretical results applying to both aspects will be presented.