Electron transport, the energy-generating process inside living cells that enables photosynthesis and respiration, is enhanced in peptides with a collapsed, folded structure. Credit: Moeen Meigooni.

Proteins are long molecules that must fold into complex three-dimensional structures to perform their cellular functions.

The folded structure of the precursor protein Ece1. The peptide sequence P3, shown in green in the model, shows the toxin Candidalysin of the yeast Candida albicans. Source: Müller R, König A, et al. ...

When a protein folds, its string of amino acids wiggles and jiggles through countless conformations before it forms a fully folded, functional protein. This rapid and complex process is hard to ...

What puts the electronic pep in peptides? A folded structure, according to a new study. Researchers combined single-molecule experiments, molecular dynamics simulations and quantum mechanics to ...