When Protein Folding Goes Wrong

The standard for nanotechnology is nature's own proteins. These biomoleculare nanomachines - macromolecules made from peptide chains of amino acid -  are able to fold themselves into a multitude of shapes and forms that enable them to carry out an equally multitude of functions important to life. Asimportant as protein folding is to virtualy all biological systems, the mechanisms behind this process have remained a mystery. Protein folding is the process by which a protein structure assumes its functional shape or conformation. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy have determined the crystal structure of a critical control element within chaperonin,  the protein complex responsible for the correct folding of other proteins. The misfolding of proteins has been linked to many diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and some forms of cancer relating back to the projects we just did in Science