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Updated: Aug 25, 2026

Microfluidic Mixers for Studying Protein Folding
Published on: April 10, 2012
The fast protein folding problem
1Department of Chemistry and Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. gruebele@scs.uiuc.edu
Abstract:
During protein folding, many of the events leading to secondary and tertiary structure occur in milliseconds or faster. Modern nuclear magnetic resonance and laser detection techniques, coupled with fast initiation of the folding reaction, are probing these events in great detail. Theory, ranging from analytical models to molecular dynamics calculations, is beginning to match up with experiment. As a result, timescales, from such elementary steps as the addition of a residue to a helix to strange kinetics of collapsing protein backbones, can now be measured and interpreted.
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