In biochemistry, the tertiary structure of a protein is its overall shape. All protein molecules are simple unbranched chains of amino acids, but it is by coiling into a specific three-dimensional shape that they are able to perform their biological function. The tertiary structure that a protein assumes to carry out its physiological role inside a cell is known as the native state or sometimes the native conformation. A protein assumes tertiary structure by "folding". An important type of chemical bond involved in stabilizing the tertiary structure of many proteins is the disulfide bond. Biochemistry is the chemistry of life, a bridge between biology and chemistry that studies how complex chemical reactions give rise to life. ... A representation of the 3D structure of myoglobin, showing coloured alpha helices. ... In chemistry, an amino acid is any molecule that contains both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. ... Cells in culture, stained for keratin (red) and DNA (green) The cell is the structural and functional unit of all living organisms, sometimes called the building blocks of life. ... In biochemistry, the native state of a protein is its operative or functional form. ... Conformation generally means structural arrangement. ... Protein folding is the process by which a protein structure assumes its functional shape or conformation. ... A chemical bond is the phenomenon of atoms being held together in molecules or crystals. ... A disulfide bond (SS-bond), also called a disulfide bridge, is a strong covalent bond between two sulfhydryl groups. ...

One goal of bioinformatics is to predict the native conformation of a protein from its primary sequence. Conventionally, tertiary structures are deduced through crystallography or multidimensional NMR. The study of protein tertiary structure is known as structural biology. Bioinformatics or computational biology is the use of techniques from applied mathematics, informatics, statistics, and computer science to solve biological problems. ... Protein structure prediction is one of the most significant tasks tackled in computational structural biology. ... A protein primary structure is a chain of amino acids. ... Crystallography (from the Greek words crystallon = cold drop / frozen drop, with its meaning extending to all solids with some degree of transparency, and graphein = write) is the experimental science of determining the arrangement of atoms in solids. ... Pacific Northwest National Laboratorys high magnetic field (800 MHz) NMR spectrometer being loaded with sample. ... Structural biology is a branch of molecular biology concerned with the study of the architecture and shape of biological macromolecules--proteins and nucleic acids in particular—and what causes them to have the structures they have. ...

See also: primary structure -- secondary structure -- quaternary structure -- structural biology