Protein Folding Proteins are complex chains of molecules found throughout the human body. Dr. Jay Winkler is Director of the Beckman Institute Laser Resource Center at Caltech.
Proteins make up much of our bodies.
They're microscopic chains of amino acids that bunch up to form complex shapes. How proteins take on these shapes is in many ways still a mystery to scientists. To form a folded protein, would be like taking a bunch of say earthworms . . . Put them out on a table. You could imagine that you've got this whole ensemble of earthworms in all these different shapes squiggling, wiggling and somehow if you had trained them well or could command them on a whistle to form a single shape like either a paper clip or a corkscrew shape.