Freezing Transition of Compact Polyampholytes
Condensed Matter
2009-10-28 v1 q-bio
Abstract
Polyampholytes (PAs) are heteropolymers with long range Coulomb interactions. Unlike polymers with short range forces, PA energy levels have non-vanishing correlations and are thus very different from the Random Energy Model (REM). Nevertheless, if charges in the PA globule are screened as in a regular plasma, PAs freeze in REM fashion. Our results shed light on the potential role of Coulomb interactions in folding and evolution of {\it proteins}, which are weakly charged PAs, in particular making connection with the finding that sequences of charged amino acids in proteins are not random.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9609062,
title = {Freezing Transition of Compact Polyampholytes},
author = {Vijay S. Pande and Alexander Yu. Grosberg and Chris Joerg and Mehran Kardar and Toyoichi Tanaka},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9609062},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 eps figures