Anfinsen's dogma

[1] The dogma was championed by the Nobel Prize Laureate[2] Christian B. Anfinsen from his research on the folding of ribonuclease A.

[3][4] His research was based on previous studies by biochemist Lisa Steiner, whose superiors at the time did not recognize the significance.

at which folding occurs, the native structure is a unique, stable and kinetically accessible minimum of the free energy.

In bovine spongiform encephalopathy, native proteins re-fold into a different stable conformation, which causes fatal amyloid buildup.

[7] Some proteins have multiple native structures, and change their fold based on some external factors.