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In biochemistry, the tertiary structure of a protein is its overall shape. All protein molecules are simple unbranched chains of amino acids, but it is by coiling into a specific three-dimensional shape that they are able to perform their biological function. The tertiary structure that a protein assumes to carry out its physiological role inside a cell is known as the native state or sometimes the native conformation. A protein assumes tertiary structure by " folding". An important type of chemical bond involved in stabilizing the tertiary structure of many proteins is the disulfide bond.One goal of bioinformatics is to predict the native conformation of a protein from its primary sequence. Conventionally, tertiary structures are deduced through crystallography or multidimensional NMR. The study of protein tertiary structure is known as structural biology.
- See also: primary structure -- secondary structure -- quaternary structureIn biochemistry, many proteins are actually assemblies of more than one protein molecule, which in the context of the larger assemblage are known as protein subunits. In addition to the tertiary structure of the subunits, multiple-subunit proteins possess -- structural biology
Protein structureProteins are amino acid chains, made up from 20 different L-α-amino acids, also referred to as residues, that fold into unique 3-dimensional protein structures . The shape into a which a protein naturally folds is known as its native state, which is
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