English

The self-assembly and evolution of homomeric protein complexes

Biomolecules 2009-10-07 v1

Abstract

We introduce a simple "patchy particle" model to study the thermodynamics and dynamics of self-assembly of homomeric protein complexes. Our calculations allow us to rationalize recent results for dihedral complexes. Namely, why evolution of such complexes naturally takes the system into a region of interaction space where (i) the evolutionarily newer interactions are weaker, (ii) subcomplexes involving the stronger interactions are observed to be thermodynamically stable on destabilization of the protein-protein interactions and (iii) the self-assembly dynamics are hierarchical with these same subcomplexes acting as kinetic intermediates.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0811.3716,
  title  = {The self-assembly and evolution of homomeric protein complexes},
  author = {Gabriel Villar and Alex W. Wilber and Alex J. Williamson and Parvinder Thiara and Jonathan P. K. Doye and Ard A. Louis and Mara N. Jochum and Anna C. F. Lewis and Emmanuel D. Levy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0811.3716},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:44:23.159Z