The Paradox Portal
Physical

Levinthal's Paradox

Proteins fold too quickly to try all conformations

Overview

The puzzle of how proteins fold so quickly when there are astronomically many possible conformations.

A protein with 100 amino acids has roughly 10^100 possible conformations. Trying them all would take longer than the universe's age. Yet proteins fold in milliseconds to seconds. How do they find the right structure so fast?

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