The details of how the laws of chemistry determine the tertiary structure of a protein are not yet fully understood: chemists can’t yet deduce, in all cases, how a given sequence of amino acids will coil up. Nevertheless, there is good evidence that the tertiary structure is in principle deducible from the sequence of amino acids. There’s nothing mysterious about the phrase ‘in principle’. Nobody can predict how a die will fall, but we all believe it is wholly determined by precise details of how it is thrown, plus some additional facts about wind resistance and so on.
