When Amino Acids are assembled then within fraction of a second the resultant Protien transforms from two dimension into three dimensionsal structure. If three dimensional structure of a resultant protien could be accurately predicted then it will have a profound effect on the pharmaceutical industry. Then accurate and powerful drugs can be quickly designed which will benefit the whole human race. Today drug developement takes a lot of time. This discovery can reduce the drug development time by several fold.
The research to predict the Protien structure accurately was started by Linus Pauling in 1935. But even to this day we are not able to predict it with 100% accuracty.
This is another example to demonstrate how great our nature is ! and how small we are. Despite all the advancement, we are far far behind to understand the secrets around us.
better yet, proteins can even start shaping into their 3-D structure while they are still being transcribed. One could even argue that perhaps because they start transforming before they are finished, they end up in their right shape.
calculating a structure of any big molecule is limited. because of the vast interactions and forces that has to be accomodated. hence abintio calculation of a protein structure is really difficult.
But there are two major tools in structural biologist namely X-ray and NMR to determine the structure of a protein.
Interesting to note here are certain protein which does not have a structure. mainly alpha -synuclean, tau protein which are involved in parkinson and Alzheimers disease.
These are extended protein with no tirtiary structure.. but are implied to cause such diseases.