Discovery alters longstanding concept of fixed protein structure

Phys.org

"Now, researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee have found that a protein, lymphotactin, which plays a vital role in the body’s immune response, can rapidly shift its shape --up to ten times a second-- between two totally unrelated structures, each with a unique role in defending the body...

"Dr. Volkman’s team is using highly sensitive nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to solve three-dimensional protein structures. NMR provides information on the number and type of chemical entities in a molecule, and can measure distances between pairs of atoms within the molecule to produce a computer-generated 3-D model of its structure.

"They discovered that human lymphotactin, a regulatory protein released by the immune system to attract and activate white blood cells, exists naturally in two distinct structures, and that the newly-identified form has no similarity to any other known protein. They also learned that each form has a unique role, one attaching to the interior wall of the blood vessel, and the other reaching out to grab white blood cells. This means that converting from one lymphotactin structure to the other is likely essential for its activation, according to Dr. Volkman."

I predict this information will end up being central to the question of how thoughts form and how memories are stored in the brain. I believe memory storage must be based on the folding of complex molecules---maybe RNA or possibly proteins. (I suppose it would be incorrect to call RNA itself a protein, though I am not sure.) I think this because I simply cannot come up with another plausible possibility.

I believe people must sleep a certain way (on the back, stomach, left or right side) to flood blood into one part of the brain to allow these proteins to fold and unfold more easily. I think durng the day, information is stored in temporary form. Then during sleep, it is converted to a more permanent form. But it is not a simple conversion of form. Rather, the information is re-worked. Chemically, I believe this is characterized by a group of proteins or RNA molecules seeking the "lowest energy" configuration---what we perceive as "the way of looking at things that makes the best sense."

To get to these low energy configurations, however, the molecules must move through higher energy configurations. The massive quantities of blood allow the molecules to more easily pass through "tangles" to get to the optimal, low energy configuration (i.e., the "best interpretation of the day's events."