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I'll bite.. what are the huge implications?


Could striking a match be viewed as cutting paper?


no, that's combustion, clearly a chemical reaction. Sure, you can use a laser to cut paper, but the teacher was talking about scissors.


And... what are the huge implications??


Come on dekhn, we want to know


OK, sure. One of the most interesting long-running issues in proteins is how they adopt their 3D structure and remain stable for such long periods.

Most people would say that covalent bonds hold the protein together and they dominate the overall structure- for example, you wouldn't ever see a strained covalent bond, so you can easily eliminate all structures with strained bonds. This was long an assumption. However, work I did at Google using Exacycle demonstrated that, in fact, large collections of hydrogen bonds can in fact work in concert to stabilize proteins with strained covalent bonds (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pro.2389/full), which overturned the assumption, and made a modest contribution to the prediction of protein folds, and protein design.


Interesting, thanks!


Thanks!




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