How A Novel Scientific Concept Was Coined the “Molten Globule State”

Abstract

As a tribute to Professor Oleg B. Ptitsyn, we organized an interview with Professor Akiyoshi Wada held in Tokyo in the middle of September 2019. Both Professor A. Wada and the late Professor O. B. Ptitsyn greatly contributed to the field of protein biophysics, and they played leading roles in establishing the concept of the “Molten Globule state” 35–40 years ago. This editorial is intended to recount, as accurately as possible, some episodes during the early days of protein research that led to the discovery of this state, and how this concept was coined the “Molten Globule state” and came to be widely accepted by biophysicists, biochemists, and molecular biologists.