Some Relationships of Structure to Function in Ribonuclease

This study by White and Anfinsen on the renaturation of fully denatured ribonuclease, or RNase, required subsequent supporting investigations to establish what came to be called the "thermodynamic hypothesis." Here they reported that RNase activity depended upon a variety of structural features, but noted that it could be inferred from the results of their experimentation that only a small part of the enzyme molecule, what they termed the "active center," was necessary for catalyst.