Protein folding is the chemistry of the sequence's decision: how a chain of amino acids—with astronomically many possible conformations—finds its native state in milliseconds, the paradox Cyrus Levinthal posed in 1968 and Christian Anfinsen's thermodynamic hypothesis answered: the sequence itself encodes the fold. This article presents a narrative review of the primary literature that built the field, from Sela, White, and Anfinsen's 1957 ribonuclease refolding and Anfinsen's 1973 principles, through Levinthal's 1968 paradox, Karplus and Weaver's 1976 diffusion-collision, Dill's 1985 hydrophobic collapse, Hemmingsen and colleagues' 1988 chaperonins, Ellis and van der Vies's 1991 chaperone synthesis, Wolynes, Onuchic, and Thirumalai's 1995 folding funnels, Wright and Dyson's 1999 intrinsically disordered proteins, Dobson's 2003 misfolding and disease, Dill and MacCallum's 2012 fifty-year assessment, and Jumper and colleagues' 2021 AlphaFold, whose neural prediction made the sequence's structure computable. The synthesis is organized around three themes: the thermodynamic settlement, in which the native state's stability and the paradox's resolution were established; the assisted and disordered revisions, in which chaperones and intrinsically disordered proteins extended the folding paradigm; and the computational settlement, in which funnels, misfolding, and AlphaFold closed the fifty-year question. It is concluded that protein folding's history is the conversion of a paradox into a science—and its latest chapter, the prediction of structure from sequence, into chemistry's most consequential computation.
Zen Revista, 10 CHEMISTRY· Zenodo (CERN European Organi...· 0 citations
Protein folding is the chemistry of the sequence's decision: how a chain of amino acids—with astronomically many possible conformations—finds its native state in milliseconds, the paradox Cyrus Levinthal posed in 1968 and Christian Anfinsen's thermodynamic hypothesis answered: the sequence itself encodes the fold. This article presents a narrative review of the primary literature that built the field, from Sela, White, and Anfinsen's 1957 ribonuclease refolding and Anfinsen's 1973 principles, through Levinthal's 1968 paradox, Karplus and Weaver's 1976 diffusion-collision, Dill's 1985 hydrophobic collapse, Hemmingsen and colleagues' 1988 chaperonins, Ellis and van der Vies's 1991 chaperone synthesis, Wolynes, Onuchic, and Thirumalai's 1995 folding funnels, Wright and Dyson's 1999 intrinsically disordered proteins, Dobson's 2003 misfolding and disease, Dill and MacCallum's 2012 fifty-year assessment, and Jumper and colleagues' 2021 AlphaFold, whose neural prediction made the sequence's structure computable. The synthesis is organized around three themes: the thermodynamic settlement, in which the native state's stability and the paradox's resolution were established; the assisted and disordered revisions, in which chaperones and intrinsically disordered proteins extended the folding paradigm; and the computational settlement, in which funnels, misfolding, and AlphaFold closed the fifty-year question. It is concluded that protein folding's history is the conversion of a paradox into a science—and its latest chapter, the prediction of structure from sequence, into chemistry's most consequential computation.
Zen Revista, 10 CHEMISTRY· Zenodo (CERN European Organi...· 0 citations
Electroanalytical chemistry reads chemistry through the electrode: the family of methods—polarography, cyclic voltammetry, and impedance spectroscopy—that make the current's response to a programmed potential a quantitative and mechanistic language. This article presents a narrative review of the primary literature that built that language, from Faraday's 1834 electrical decomposition and Nernst's 1889 electromotive activity, through Heyrovský and Shikata's 1925 polarograph and Ilkovič's 1934 diffusion-current equation, Randles's 1948 cathode-ray polarography and Ševčík's 1948 triangular-wave analysis, Nicholson and Shain's 1964 theory of stationary electrode polarography, whose cyclic voltammetry's peaks became the field's fingerprints, Kolthoff and Lingane's 1952 Polarography and Delahay's 1954 instrumental methods, Bard and Faulkner's 2001 Electrochemical Methods, the codifying textbook, and the impedance line of Epelboin, Keddam, and Takenouchi's 1972 reaction models and Orazem and Tribollet's 2008 Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy. The synthesis is organized around three themes: the thermodynamic and polarographic foundation, in which the electrode's equilibrium and diffusion currents were formalized; the voltammetric settlement, in which the sweep's peaks acquired their theory and their diagnostic power; and the impedance extension, in which the frequency domain separated the interface's processes. It is concluded that electroanalysis's century is the electrode's conversion into an instrument—its current a language whose grammar the corpus wrote.
Zen Revista, 10 CHEMISTRY· Zenodo (CERN European Organi...· 0 citations
Electroanalytical chemistry reads chemistry through the electrode: the family of methods—polarography, cyclic voltammetry, and impedance spectroscopy—that make the current's response to a programmed potential a quantitative and mechanistic language. This article presents a narrative review of the primary literature that built that language, from Faraday's 1834 electrical decomposition and Nernst's 1889 electromotive activity, through Heyrovský and Shikata's 1925 polarograph and Ilkovič's 1934 diffusion-current equation, Randles's 1948 cathode-ray polarography and Ševčík's 1948 triangular-wave analysis, Nicholson and Shain's 1964 theory of stationary electrode polarography, whose cyclic voltammetry's peaks became the field's fingerprints, Kolthoff and Lingane's 1952 Polarography and Delahay's 1954 instrumental methods, Bard and Faulkner's 2001 Electrochemical Methods, the codifying textbook, and the impedance line of Epelboin, Keddam, and Takenouchi's 1972 reaction models and Orazem and Tribollet's 2008 Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy. The synthesis is organized around three themes: the thermodynamic and polarographic foundation, in which the electrode's equilibrium and diffusion currents were formalized; the voltammetric settlement, in which the sweep's peaks acquired their theory and their diagnostic power; and the impedance extension, in which the frequency domain separated the interface's processes. It is concluded that electroanalysis's century is the electrode's conversion into an instrument—its current a language whose grammar the corpus wrote.
Zen Revista, 10 CHEMISTRY· Zenodo (CERN European Organi...· 0 citations