Characterizing the Conformationome: Toward a Structural Understanding of the Proteome.

While non-native protein conformations such as folding intermediates are rarely observed in solution such species are often stabilized as gaseous ions during electrospray ionization for mass spectrometry. This opens the possibility of large scale efforts to capture information about many non-native structures such as folding intermediates or malformed conformations having deleterious effects: studies of the conformationome.