Figure 1.

The protein folding continuum. Spectrum of disorder characterized by the entropy value. Proteins are identified as having a well-defined three-dimensional structure, a molten-globule structure consisting of folded ordered and disordered regions or a completely disordered random coil. Depiction illustrates folded regions being less dynamic than coils near the N- and C-termini. Random coils have no inherent three-dimensional structure and the vast number of polar and charged amino acid residues is shown in stick format. Folded structure depicts PDB 1A3N, molten-globule structure depicts 6ES6 and random coil depicts 1L1 K [16–18].