ABSTRACT
Ribozymes ................................................................................................... 136 9.3 Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................................. 138 Acknowledgment ........................................................................................................................... 138 References ...................................................................................................................................... 138
Proteins perform a variety of complex tasks in biological systems. Examples include oxygen transport in blood, catalytic function, cell signaling, and membrane transports. In spite of their broad
utility, their basic composition is quite simple: linear polymers of amino-acid sequences. In solution, the amino-acid sequences encode all the necessary information to adopt a unique three-dimensional structure, the native state. The transition from an unstructured state (unfolded, U) to the native state (folded, F) is a self-organizing process called protein folding.
