What is meant by the primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of a protein?

Question

also, explain how the primary structure of a polypeptide influences its secondary and tertiary structure.

Answer 1

Primary structure - amino acid sequence.

Secondary structure - areas of alpha helix, beta sheets

Tertiary structure - the overall way the protein folds

Quaternary structure - how multiple subunits of a protein come together.

The folding of a protein (secondary and tertiary structure) is in theory its lowest energy state, which is dictated by the primary structure.