Anfinsen's dogma

Anfinsen the dogma ( thermodynamic hypothesis protein folding ) postulated that each protein has a native protein under physiological conditions, maximum folding free energy which is dictated by the amino acid sequence. The postulate was formulated by Nobel laureate Christian B. Anfinsen because of its studies on ribonuclease A.

Properties

Anfinsen formulated three conditions:

• Uniqueness - Each amino acid sequence has only one conformation of maximum free energy

• Stability - insensitivity to small changes in the environment through the energetically most favorable folding

• Kinetic accessibility - do not lie to large activation energies between the individual folding steps

Limiting cases of the Anfinsen dogma are eg Prions and proteins that require chaperones for protein folding. The software POEM @ home uses parts of Anfinsen dogma for protein structure prediction.

The Levinthal paradox describes the increasing complexity of protein folding to achieve a given protein structure with increasing chain length.