Globular proteins owe their importance to their unique tertiary structure .
Structural biochemists who use x-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance, circular dichroism, and other physical techniques to predict tertiary structure do so through measurements on folded protein molecules. However, the primary sequence of a potential protein can now be determined from DNA and many such sequences are being reported. Which of those are most likely to warrant further study can often be determined with knowledge of the tertiary structure. Thus it would be extremely useful if tertiary structure could be predicted directly from primary structure . Tertiary structure can be considered an aggregate of alpha helices, beta strands and turns, elements of secondary structure .