Students are taught that a protein’s three-dimensional shape is critical to its function, but it turns out that many proteins exist in a state of “disorder” and yet are functional. If you open any biology textbook to the section on proteins, you will learn that a protein is made up of a sequence of amino acids, that the sequence determines how the chain of amino acids folds into a compact structure, and that the folded protein’s structure determines its function. In other words sequence encodes structure and function derives from structure. But the textbooks may have to be rewritten.
