Discovery Could Have Implicatications For Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, Mad Cow Disease And Many Cancers (Medical News Today) The thousands of proteins found in nature are simply strings of amino acids, assembled by genes, and scientists have long believed that they automatically fold themselves into uniquely fixed, 3-dimensional shapes to fire the engine of life. In the era of genetic research, identifying those shapes and their functions has become a worldwide focus of biomedical science. [News Source]