Microscopic mechanism for cold denaturation
Soft Condensed Matter
2009-11-13 v1
Abstract
We elucidate the mechanism of cold denaturation through constant-pressure simulations for a model of hydrophobic molecules in an explicit solvent. We find that the temperature dependence of the hydrophobic effect is the driving force/induces/facilitates cold denaturation. The physical mechanism underlying this phenomenon is identified as the destabilization of hydrophobic contact in favor of solvent separated configurations, the same mechanism seen in pressure induced denaturation. A phenomenological explanation proposed for the mechanism is suggested as being responsible for cold denaturation in real proteins.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0704.2787,
title = {Microscopic mechanism for cold denaturation},
author = {Cristiano L. Dias and Tapio Ala-Nissila and Mikko Karttunen and Ilpo Vattulainen and Martin Grant},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0704.2787},
year = {2009}
}