Related papers: Protein mechanical unfolding: a model with binary …
The growing interest for comparing protein internal dynamics owes much to the realization that protein function can be accompanied or assisted by structural fluctuations and conformational changes. Analogously to the case of functional…
We used the atomic force microscope to manipulate and unfold individual molecules of the titin I27 domain and reconstructed its free energy surface using Jarzynski's equality. The free energy surface for both stretching and unfolding was…
The energy landscapes of proteins have evolved to be different from most random heteropolymers. Many studies have concluded that evolutionary selection for rapid and reliable folding to a given structure that is stable at biological…
To what extent do general features of folding/unfolding kinetics of small globular proteins follow from their thermodynamic properties? To address this question, we investigate a new simplifed protein chain model that embodies a cooperative…
We propose a simple approach, based on the minimization of the total (entropic plus unfolding) energy of a two-state system, describing the stretch-induced unfolding of macromolecules (proteins, silks, nanopolymers, DNA/RNA). The model is…
The differing ability of polypeptide conformations to act as the native state of proteins has long been rationalized in terms of differing kinetic accessibility or thermodynamic stability. Building on the successful applications of physical…
A computational method is developed to work on an inverse equilibrium problem with an interest towards applications with protein folding. In general, we are given a set of equilibrium confgiurations and want to derive the most probable…
We refine a protein model that reproduces fundamental aspects of protein thermodynamics. The model exhibits two transitions, hot and cold unfolding. The number of relevant parameters is reduced to three: 1) binding energy of folding…
I study the properties of the equilibrium probability distribution of a protein folding model originally introduced by Wako and Saito, and later reconsidered by Munoz and Eaton. The model is a one-dimensional model with binary variables and…
We review the recent progress in computational approaches to protein design which builds on advances in statistical-mechanical protein folding theory. In particular, we evaluate the degeneracy of the protein code (i.e. how many sequences…
A microscopic theory of the free energy barriers and folding routes for minimally frustrated proteins is presented, greatly expanding on the presentation of the variational approach outlined previously [J. J. Portman, S. Takada, P. G.…
A coarse-grained off-lattice model that is not biased in any way to the native state is proposed to fold proteins. To predict the native structure in a reasonable time, the model has included the essential effects of water in an effective…
Perturbing a Go model towards a realistic protein Hamiltonian by adding non-native interactions, we find that the folding rate is in general enhanced as ruggedness is initially increased, as long as the protein is sufficiently large and…
The thermodynamics of proteins indicate that folding/unfolding takes place either through stable intermediates or through a two-state process without intermediates. The rather short folding times of the two-state process indicate that…
Energy landscape theory describes how a full-length protein can attain its native fold by sampling only a tiny fraction of all possible structures. Although protein folding is now understood to be concomitant with synthesis on the ribosome,…
We present a method to investigate the kinetics of protein folding on a long time-scale and the dynamics underlying the formation of secondary and tertiary structures during the entire reaction. The approach is based on the formal analogy…
A four states phase diagram for protein folding as a function of temperature and solvent quality is derived from an improved 2-d lattice model taking into account the temperature dependence of the hydrophobic effect. The phase diagram…
We present a simple model which allows to investigate equilibrium aspects of molecular recognition between rigid biomolecules on a generic level. Using a two-stage approach, which consists of a design and a testing step, the role of…
We develop a theoretical approach to the protein folding problem based on out-of-equilibrium stochastic dynamics. Within this framework, the computational difficulties related to the existence of large time scale gaps in the protein folding…
Two-state cooperativity is an important characteristic in protein folding. It is defined by a depletion of states lying energetically between folded and unfolded conformations. While there are different ways to test for two-state…