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cdstephens t1_j53vdzk wrote

I believe protein folding can be treated with the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Essentially, while quantum effects of the electrons in the system can be important, quantum effects of the nuclei can be neglected, and thus the nuclei are essentially treated as classical objects with definite position/momentum.

So, the quantum mechanical aspects will lie with the electronic structure; van der Waals forces, hydrogen bonds, and all that. These are all quantum phenomena.

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