Protein Stability, Folding, Disaggregation and Etiology of Conformational Malfunctions

Estimation of protein stability is important for many reasons: first providing an understanding of the basic thermodynamics of the process of folding, protein engineering, and protein stability plays important role in biotechnology especially in food and protein drug design. Today, proteins are used in many branches, including industrial processes, pharmaceutical industry, and medical fields. Activity and stability of proteins are essential for providing healthy condition or required during their production, storage and use in their applications. Through the first part of this review, we aim to define the protein stability terms and factors. Any factor induces stabilizing conformation and/or aggregation of proteins might be of importance in etiology of the conformational diseases. In the second part we are going to clarify a comprehensive definition of protein stability issues with special emphasis on the advantages of these concepts in protein conformational diseases and biotechnology with a short insight to protein engineering approaches.