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prionprion OP t1_j52nptp wrote

Reply to comment by fuzzywolf23 in How is protein folding quantum mechanical? by prionprion

this is also my point, I know the whole folding is more classical, and the folding is mainly driven by thermodynamics, but I feel like how the change in shape happen as protein jump from one conformation to another is quantum mechanical

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fuzzywolf23 t1_j52yn3z wrote

The folding is driven by thermodynamics, but in a sense, so is everything!

All of nature tends to move from higher energy to lower energy states. You can approximately calculate the energy of a protein structure, but you'll be wrong by enough that your error is bigger than the difference between candidate structures. To calculate the energy with sufficient accuracy, you need to use quantum mechanics using, e.g., density functional theory.

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