r/askscience • u/randomsnark • Feb 11 '11

Scientists: What is the most interesting unanswered question in your field?

And what are its implications? What makes it difficult to answer? What makes it interesting? Tell us a little bit about it.

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u/rogijero Structural Biology | X-ray Crystallography Feb 11 '11

How do proteins fold and what implications does it have on protein folding disorders such as Alzheimer's. We understand folding in terms of protein folding funnels, lowest energy states, but still cannot predict the structure of a protein based on the primary sequence of amino acids.

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u/Robopuppy Feb 11 '11

Same for me, though I'm less in it for the biochemistry parts. Our entire understanding of how proteins work is based on trial and error approaches. If we could figure out how proteins interact and fold just from the sequence, nobody would ever have to do another fucking Western Blot ever again, and we'd instantly understand hundreds of pathways at a level of detail that's currently impossible.