SLPx
That issue is on our current journals board. I flipped through the article and will copy it when I locate my copy card.
The article is really a review article with a hypothesis stating what us protein folding people already knew. It's a useful article, don't get me wrong, but it is an opportunistic article basically stating the obvious. I'll let you know if I change my mind after carefully reading it. I have always thought of protein folds as goverened by 'natrual law', my research concerns the computer simualtion of protein folding after all.
Abstracts usually do not contain that, but it does contain their conclusions, which seemed ot me to be important.
I don't agree. Abstracts usually reveal the basic results as well as conclusions. This artilce is primarily a reivew article of some of my favourite protein theoriticians (Chothia, Thornton etc).
Funny - I always thought that selection (of various types) is not quite random.
I'm talking about pre-selection. Selection is non-random but it does not help the cell preferentially mutate to canonical folds.
TB: Random variation will not be influenced by the number of viable protein folds.
SLPx: Why not? If only X-number of folds are possible, then it seems to me that there are, in fact, not some nearly infinate number of possibilities, which are the basis of the typical "impossibility" calculations/assertions.
Again I'm talking pre-selection. What the paper is really about is that if you do an artificial evolution experiemtn (phage display or cell-based) you are likely to end up with a canonical protein fold. It says not much more than that. It will not speed up the result becasue that protein fold still has to have a compatible sequence. It's not like throwing electrons and protons together and getting hydrogen. You need the right sequence. If the sequence is right you get a canoncial fold, sure. That's my honest professional opinion transcending the E vs C debate.
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 01-13-2003]
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