I never worked directly with protein folding or structure, but worked a bit in proteomics on teams measuring gene expression (which you could roughly think of a

I never worked directly with protein folding or structure, but worked a bit in proteomics on teams measuring gene expression (which you could roughly think of as how much of each protein is found in this cell). IIRC there are 50,000 - potentially millions of "kinds" of proteins found in a human, and the "shape" of most of them is unknown, and that determines a lot about how they work. So imagine you gave an iPhone to someone in the 1800's, they wouldn't understand how most of it works, but this may be analogous to them finally figuring out some key aspects of the transistor. So it's another tool in the toolbelt and like all good tools will be used in all sorts of unpredictable ways. Someone else I'm sure could do a lot better at explaining how important shape is to understanding the function and behavior of proteins.