Us and it ' s not close anymore . 6 th and 7 th string tackles and 3 rd sting center by the end of that game . Willie Beavers may be our best starting tackle next week . <| sep |> Honestly , I think the main problem is that your thinkinganalogy for how proteins fold is overly simple . Rather than thinking of the energy state of a protein as a twodimensional hill , it ' s be more accurate to think of it as a threedimensional hill . So , an unfolded protein at the highest energy state would be something like a boulder sitting atop a mountain peak it ' s unstable and has tons of energy , but it could start rolling down the hill in any random direction , towards any of a large number of potential lowenergy depressions lower down the mountain . The energy states of the various depressions could be quite variable but if a lowerenergy depression is on the opposite side of the mountain from the side the boulder happened to roll down , it ' s very unlikely for the boulder to roll back up the mountain to get to that lower depression , so it will be stable even if not at the lowest possible energy state . When a protein starts off unfolded , the direction that it will start to take with folding is essentially random that ' s why there are tons of enzymes in the proteome . Enzymes change the chemicalphysical attractions as the protein folds they reshape landscape around the boulder to make it more likely to fold into a particular lowenergy conformation roll down a specific side of the mountain . Some enzymes like prions can reshape the chemical environment of a protein so much that an already folded protein will no longer be in a stable energy state , and cause it to unfold and refold into a new conformation . However enzymes are not permanently attached to the proteins they assist . Once a protein is folded , the enzyme goes off to do other things the landscape around the boulder returns back to normal but as said above , it leaves the protein in a new stable state it ' s in a new depression somewhere on the mountain . Hope this helps you understand better !