Amino Acids & Protein Structure

Intermolecular Forces

Chemical Kinetics

Oxidation-Reduction

Experiments with ribonuclease originally showed that if denaturing chemicals are removed, many proteins will regain their native shape and activity. This was important in the history of biology because it showed that secondary and tertiary structure are determined by primary structure. Although there are complex exceptions in cases such as post-translational processing, for most proteins, all the information necessary for the protein to assume its native state is encoded in the DNA.