Lit Links

So, in case any were wondering, my area on the East Coast was mostly spared the wrath of Hurricane to Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy.  Some rain, a bit more wind, but not many power outages in the immediate area.  I am however fairly well prepared for any mystery zombie apocalypses that might arise (from the dead).  I hope that all of you reading who were subject to its furor endured the storm as well as possible.

In any case, some bits of possible interest -

1.) PNAS has a special feature this week on "the Chemical Physics of Protein Folding."  Sadly, it's behind a paywall for the time being.

1.5.) Related to this, I once mentioned a while back in a comment (I believe over at the Inquisitive Ket) about one of the less-important reasons Levinthal's paradox never really bothered me, namely, that proteins aren't really free to sample all possible conformations due to their interactions with other proteins (even indirectly due to crowding), the solvent, and with itself.  In any case, it's always interesting to see people carefully examine these sorts of questions in the recent literature.  

2.) Gaining structural insight occasionally takes a while.  It also reminds me of the utility of neutron science for biochemistry - the ability to use contrast variation using selective deuteration make it possible to probe multicomponent systems.  And let's not forget that one can also use neutrons for spectroscopic measurements. 

Anyway, back to the actual science…..