Scientists are listening to how proteins fold

Scientists have been studying how proteins fold for decades. This research got a boost in late 2020, when AlphaFold proved it could predict protein structures with great accuracy . But what exactly happens as proteins transition from unfolded to folded states and vice versa? This is information that scientists have struggled to visualize. So University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chemistry researcher Martin Gruebele and composer and software developer Carla Scaletti teamed up to try sound instead. Proteins are vital for life, involved in virtually every biochemical process that makes life possible. They comprise one or more amino acid chains (called polypeptides) that are folded into complex 3D structures. These configurations are very specific and determine a protein's function. Misfolded proteins are responsible for conditions like Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, cystic fibrosis, and diabetes. Scaletti and Gruebele mapped the hydrogen bonds —relatively weak bonds between polypeptide chains and between the chains and