English

Thermodynamics of aggregation of two proteins

Biomolecules 2009-11-13 v2 Soft Condensed Matter

Abstract

We investigate aggregation mechanism of two proteins in a thermodynamically unambiguous manner by considering the finite size effect of free energy landscape of HP lattice protein model. Multi-Self-Overlap-Ensemble Monte Carlo method is used for numerical calculations. We find that a dimer can be formed spontaneously as a thermodynamically stable state when the system is small enough. It implies the possibility that the aggregation of proteins in a cell is triggered when they are confined in a small region by, for example, being surrounded by other macromolecules.We also find that the dimer exhibits a transition between unstable state and metastable state in the infinite system.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.q-bio/0603024,
  title  = {Thermodynamics of aggregation of two proteins},
  author = {Kazuki Nakanishi and Macoto Kikuchi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:q-bio/0603024},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

jpsj2.cls, 7 pages, 14 figures; misconfigurations of Fig.Nos. corrected