TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you are given a sentence from the research paper and your task is to classify the given sentence into the following categories: Background (Why is this problem important? What relevant works have been created before? What is still missing in the previous works? What are the high-level research questions? How might this help other research or researchers?), Purpose (What specific things do the researchers want to do? What specific knowledge do the researchers want to gain? What specific hypothesis do the researchers want to test?), Method (How did the researchers do the work or find what they sought? What are the procedures and steps of the research?), or Finding (What did the researchers find out? Did the proposed methods work? Did the thing behave as the researchers expected?). 
PROBLEM: which has been demonstrated to play a pivotal role in proteolytic processing of gene 1-encoded polyproteins.

SOLUTION: background

PROBLEM: Proteins that are only temporarily rendered soluble by fusing them to MBP are readily identified at this stage because they will precipitate after the MBP tag is removed by 3C protease.

SOLUTION: method

PROBLEM: in lung tissues of smokers without airflow limitation and COPD patients in comparison to nonsmoking individuals ( never-smokers ).

SOLUTION:
purpose