Maybe someone you know has a genetic disease like hemophilia or a degenerative one like Alzheimer's. Protein folding is a problem so complex and difficult, current computing power is not enough to solve it. Using one of the most powerful computers today, it would take around 300 years to calculate the folding process for even a very small protein. Proteins Proteins is a fundamental component of living things. The function of a protein is determined by its shape.
Proteins are fairly large molecules, made up of strings of amino acids linked like a chain.
There are twenty amino acids, and proteins range in length from a few to over a thousand amino acids. Different combinations of amino acids link to form tens of thousands of proteins. Each protein has one folded shape, and consistently folds into it, usually in less than a second. That complicated folded shape dictates how the protein works, and also how it interacts with other entities. Scientists today can already discover the final, folded shape of some proteins.