Unwinding the mysteries of protein folding
Tom Perkins and JILA team unfold proteins with precise new instrumentation
Unwinding an individual single-molecule composed of a helical string of amino acids stitched through the boundary of a cell—while measuring the force and time that takes—seems to be a fairly tall order in itself. But that wasn’t enough for ϳԹ researcher Tom Perkins, who spent the last seven years improving the techniques needed to exactly understand the steps needed to unfold these proteins.
“What we achieved is a 10-fold increase in force precision, and a 100-fold increase in time resolution,” said Perkins, a professor of molecular cellular and developmental biology and also a fellow at , ϳԹ’s pa