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Meaning of Levinthal's paradox | Babel Free

Noun CEFR B2

Definitions

The observation that, because of the very large number of degrees of freedom in an unfolded polypeptide chain, the molecule has an astronomically large number of possible conformations, and therefore sequentially sampling all the possible conformations is not practical, yet most small proteins fold spontaneously on a millisecond or even microsecond timescale.

CEFR level

B2
Upper Intermediate
This word is part of the CEFR B2 vocabulary — upper intermediate level.
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