[Excerpt] Alzheimer's disease. Cystic fibrosis. Mad Cow disease. An inherited form of emphysema. Even many cancers. Recent discoveries show that all these apparently unrelated diseases result from protein folding gone wrong. As though that weren't enough, many of the unexpected difficulties biotechnology companies encounter when trying to produce human proteins in bacteria also result from something amiss when proteins fold.

What exactly is this phenomenon? We all learned that proteins are fundamental components of all living cells: our own, the bacteria that infect us, the plants and animals we eat. The hemoglobin that carries oxygen to our tissues, the insulin that signals our bodies to store excess sugar, the antibodies that fight infection, the actin and myosin that allow our muscles to contract, and the collagen that makes up our tendons and ligaments (and even much of our bones)—all are proteins.

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