Author(s)

Arieh Ben-Naim

Department of Physical Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.

This article is concerned with the so-called Levinthal’s paradox. It will be argued that many have sought a “solution” to Levinthal’s paradox, where in fact, the “solution” already appeared in Levinthal’s original articles. Most of the subsequent suggested “solutions” were inadequate solutions to a non-paradox. It is shown that the discovery of strong hydrophilic forces not only dismisses the Levintal paradox, but also provides a solution to the general problem of protein folding. A simple model based on the Markov process is presented to demonstrate how a strong biased-force can dramatically reduce the number of steps required to reach the stable native 3-D structure of the protein.

Protein Folding; Levinthal Paradox; Hydrophilic Forces; Markov Process

A. Ben-Naim, "Levinthal’s Paradox Revisited, and Dismissed," Open Journal of Biophysics, Vol. 2 No. 2, 2012, pp. 23-32. doi: 10.4236/ojbiphy.2012.22004.