What's in a name? From "fluctuation fit" to "conformational selection": rediscovery of a concept.

Rediscoveries are not rare in biology. A recent example is the re-birth of the "fluctuation fit" concept developed by F. B. Straub and G. Szabolcsi in the sixties of the last century, under various names, the most popular of which is the "conformational selection". This theory offers an alternative to the "induced fit" concept by Koshland for the interpretation of the mechanism of protein—ligand interactions. A central question is whether the ligand induces a conformational change (as described by the induced fit model) or rather selects and stabilizes a complementary conformation from a pre-existing equilibrium of various states of the protein (according to the fluctuation fit/conformational selection model). Straub and Szabolcsi’s role and the factors hindering the spread of the fluctuation fit theory are discussed in the context of the history of the Hungarian biology in the 1950s and 1960s.