Yon Jeannine M
Institut de Biochimie Biophysique Moléculaire et Cellulaire, UMR Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Paris-Sud, Orsay, France.
J Cell Mol Med. 2002 Jul-Sep;6(3):307-27. doi: 10.1111/j.1582-4934.2002.tb00511.x.
Protein folding is a topic of fundamental interest since it concerns the mechanisms by which the genetic message is translated into the three-dimensional and functional structure of proteins. In these post-genomic times, the knowledge of the fundamental principles are required in the exploitation of the information contained in the increasing number of sequenced genomes. Protein folding also has practical applications in the understanding of different pathologies and the development of novel therapeutics to prevent diseases associated with protein misfolding and aggregation. Significant advances have been made ranging from the Anfinsen postulate to the "new view" which describes the folding process in terms of an energy landscape. These new insights arise from both theoretical and experimental studies. The problem of folding in the cellular environment is briefly discussed. The modern view of misfolding and aggregation processes that are involved in several pathologies such as prion and Alzheimer diseases. Several approaches of structure prediction, which is a very active field of research, are described.
蛋白质折叠是一个具有根本重要性的研究课题，因为它涉及将遗传信息转化为蛋白质三维功能结构的机制。在这个后基因组时代，要利用越来越多已测序基因组中包含的信息，就需要掌握基本原理。蛋白质折叠在理解不同病理学以及开发预防与蛋白质错误折叠和聚集相关疾病的新型疗法方面也有实际应用。从安芬森假设到用能量景观描述折叠过程的“新观点”，都取得了重大进展。这些新见解来自理论和实验研究。本文简要讨论了细胞环境中的折叠问题。阐述了与朊病毒和阿尔茨海默病等多种病理学相关的错误折叠和聚集过程的现代观点。还描述了结构预测的几种方法，这是一个非常活跃的研究领域。
