Читать книгу Materials for Biomedical Engineering - Mohamed N. Rahaman - Страница 67

Proteins are the most versatile macromolecules in living organisms and they serve crucial functions in essentially all biological processes (Alberts et al. 2014). They are not only long‐chain molecules but they can fold in a complex manner to give a variety of three‐dimensional shapes. The functionality of a protein depends critically on its conformation and, thus, an understanding of how atomic bonding controls the overall three‐dimensional shape of a protein is important. Because of its complexity, the conformation of proteins is often described at multiple levels, referred to as primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structure, each emphasizing different features of the overall three‐dimensional structure.