Department of Chemistry, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA. gary_pielak@unc.edu
Almost everything we know about protein biophysics comes from studies on purified proteins in dilute solution. Most proteins, however, operate inside cells where the concentration of macromolecules can be >300 mg/mL. Although reductionism-based approaches have served protein science well for more than a century, biochemists now have the tools to study proteins under these more physiologically relevant conditions. We review a part of this burgeoning postreductionist landscape by focusing on high-resolution protein nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, the only method that provides atomic-level information over an entire protein under the crowded conditions found in cells.