Reconstructing folding funnels from experimental data to uncover proteins' inner life

Proteins are the molecules of life. They are chemically programmed by their amino acid sequence to fold into highly organized conformations that underpin all of biological structure (e.g., hair, scales) and function (e.g., enzymes, antibodies). Understanding the sequence-structure-function relationship—the "protein folding problem"—is one of the great, unsolved problems in physical chemistry, and is of inestimable scientific value in exposing the inner workings of life and the ration