Why is protein folding important? Theoretical importance? Can we do something with protein folding knowledge? If so, what?
I've been hearing about AlphaFold from the CS side. There they seem to focus on protein folding primarily as an interesting space to apply their CS efforts.
So yeah the applications are enormous, from medicine to better industrial chemical processes, from warfare to food manufacturing.
Does that imply proteins have some dynamics that need to be predicted too? I remember seeing animations of molecular machines that appeared to be "walking" inside the body - are those proteins or more complex structures?
They are called motor proteins because they convert chemical energy into kinetic energy. In the case of kinesin, it forms a dimer (two copies of itself bind together to form the two "legs") and also binds to light chains (accessory proteins that modulate its behavior) so that it can walk along filaments and drag cargo around your cells. They are both proteins and more complex structures because multiple proteins are interacting, as well as binding small molecules and catalyzing them into chemical products, all to produce the motion.