How are we so good at folding proteins?
Join David Balchin, a Group Leader at the Crick, as he describes the fascinating ways our cells make sure proteins fold correctly, and what happens when it goes awry.
Proteins carry out almost every important function in our body, from copying our DNA to turning the food we eat into energy.
These tiny ‘molecular machines’ are first made by our cells as straight chains, like long pieces of string. Then, to work properly, each protein must fold up into an intricate 3-D shape.
The sheer scale of protein folding within our cells is staggering. Ribosomes, the molecular machines within our cells that make proteins, make around one protein every 80 seconds. Given there are over five million ribosomes in a cell, every single one of our cells makes four to eight million proteins a minute.
The remarkable process of microscopic origami is the focus of David Balchin’s lab at the Crick.
David studied proteins and protein folding at the university of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Germany before starting his lab at the Crick in 2020. His team are driven by curiosity to understand the intricate workings of cells at the molecular level.
Crick Crash Courses started life as talks for our staff, to help everyone working here, scientists and non-scientists, better understand the Crick's discovery research into how life works.
We're now opening our doors to our crash course talks, giving everyone, everywhere, the opportunity to hear directly from our scientists as they investigate some of the most complex challenges in human health.
