The chemical or biological process by which two identical or similar molecular units combine or bond together to form a dimer.
From 'dimerize' (to form a dimer) + '-ation' (process). The root 'dimer' comes from Greek 'di-' (two) + 'meros' (part), with '-ization' indicating the transformation process.
Viral proteins often use dimerization as a crucial trick—the coronavirus spike protein needs to dimerize to unfold properly and infect cells, so blocking dimerization is actually one strategy researchers explore for making antiviral drugs.
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