GYVYBĖS KODO TVARKA
THE ORDER OF THE LIFE CODE

Summary/Abstract: The article describes the biochemical mechanisms of the cell showing their complex but economic action and purposive activity. The classical example of such sophisticated phenomenon is protein folding. Any deviation from the native structure of a protein results in the development of a disease or becomes incompatible with life. Most neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer, Parkinson, Jakob-Creutzfeld) are suggested as protein aggregation and conformational diseases. Proteins are the workhorses of living organisms, executing the genetic code inscribed in its DNA. The proteins’ complexity is realized by 20 amino acids. The same proteins are not similar not only by their amino acid composition, but also by the sequence of their amino acids. The first idea about protein folding came with the observation that regardless of unaffected chemical integrity, at high temperatures proteins lose their enzymatic activity. Protein function is a consequence of not only the linear sequence, but also of the overall three-dimensional structure of the protein. By executing the Human Genome Project, more than 35,000 different protein sequences encoded in the human genome were identified. A newly synthesized protein sequence must be able to find its way rapidly to its correct fold rather than to its countless alternatives. To discover how this happens is one of the greatest challenges in modern structural biology.

• Details
• Contents