Curt writes (quoting Hal):
> > Cells are constrained by the materials they have to work with, and by
> > the fact that the error rate in constructing proteins prevents them
> > from building ones beyond a certain size. So what they do is build
> > them with self-assembling sub-units. If a sub-unit is malformed due to
> > an error, it won't fit with the others and so it won't be picked up in
> > the self-assembly. At least that seems to be the theory.
>
> I'd never thought of it that way. That's an interesting
> model. Do you have a ref I could chase down?
Just what I gleaned from the original reference, especially the page on
symmetry: http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/articles/00articles/goodsellp2.html
See figures 6 and 7 for pictures of some of the symmetric protein
complexes.
Hal
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