The "protein folding problem" consists of three closely related puzzles: (a) What is the folding code? (b) What is the folding mechanism? (c) Can we predict the native structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence? Once regarded as a grand challenge, protein folding has seen great progress in recent years. Now, foldable proteins and nonbiological polymers are being designed routinely and moving toward successful applications. The structures of small proteins are now often well predicted by computer methods. And, there is now a testable explanation for how a protein can fold so quickly: A protein solves its large global optimization problem as a series of smaller local optimization problems, growing and assembling the native structure from peptide fragments, local structures first.

中文翻译：

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蛋白质折叠问题。


“蛋白质折叠问题”由三个密切相关的难题组成：（a）折叠代码是什么？ (b) 折叠机制是什么？ (c) 我们能否从蛋白质的氨基酸序列预测其天然结构？曾经被视为一项巨大挑战的蛋白质折叠近年来取得了巨大进展。现在，可折叠蛋白质和非生物聚合物正在被常规设计并走向成功的应用。现在，小蛋白质的结构通常可以通过计算机方法很好地预测。而且，现在对于蛋白质如何如此快速地折叠有了一个可测试的解释：蛋白质将其大型全局优化问题解决为一系列较小的局部优化问题，首先从肽片段中生长和组装天然结构，局部结构。