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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1992 Jan 1;89(1):20–22. doi: 10.1073/pnas.89.1.20

Levinthal's paradox.

R Zwanzig 1, A Szabo 1, B Bagchi 1
PMCID: PMC48166  PMID: 1729690

Abstract

Levinthal's paradox is that finding the native folded state of a protein by a random search among all possible configurations can take an enormously long time. Yet proteins can fold in seconds or less. Mathematical analysis of a simple model shows that a small and physically reasonable energy bias against locally unfavorable configurations, of the order of a few kT, can reduce Levinthal's time to a biologically significant size.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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