Related papers: Protein Folding as a Physical Stochastic Process
Self-assembly of proteins is a biological phenomenon which gives rise to spontaneous formation of amyloid fibrils or polymers. The starting point of this phase, called nucleation exhibits an important variability among replicated…
Unstructured proteins can modulate cellular responses to environmental conditions by undergoing coil-globule transitions and phase separation. However, the molecular mechanisms of these phenomena still need to be fully understood. Here, we…
A model to describe the mechanism of conformational dynamics in secondary protein based on matter interactions is proposed. The approach deploys the lagrangian method by imposing certain symmetry breaking. The protein backbone is initially…
We present a novel Monte Carlo simulation of protein folding, in which all heavy atoms are represented as interacting hard spheres. This model includes all degrees of freedom relevant to folding - all sidechain and backbone torsions - and…
One of the main concerns of Anfinsen was to reveal the connection between the amino acid sequence and their biologically active conformation. This search gave rise to two crucial questions in structural biology, namely, why the proteins…
Using a simple hydrophobic/polar protein model, we perform a Monte Carlo study of the thermodynamics and kinetics of binding to a target structure for two closely related sequences, one of which has a unique folded state while the other is…
Cell migration is a fundamental process involved in physiological phenomena such as the immune response and morphogenesis, but also in pathological processes, such as the development of tumor metastasis. These functions are effectively…
While all the information required for the folding of a protein is contained in its amino acid sequence, one has not yet learnt how to extract this information so as to predict the detailed, biological active, three-dimensional structure of…
A simple statistical mechanical model proposed by Wako and Sait$\hat{\rm o}$ has explained the aspects of protein folding surprisingly well. This model was systematically applied to multiple proteins by Mu$\tilde{\rm n}$oz and Eaton and has…
Under the most common experimental conditions, the adsorption of proteins to solid surfaces is an spontaneous process that leads to a rather compact layer of randomly oriented molecules. Due to the importance of this process for the…
The folding of naturally occurring, single domain proteins is usually well-described as a simple, single exponential process lacking significant trapped states. Here we further explore the hypothesis that the smooth energy landscape this…
Mechanically induced folding of passive cross-linkers is a fundamental biological phenomenon. A typical example is a conformational change in myosin II responsible for the power-stroke in skeletal muscles. In this paper we present an…
The native structures of proteins, except for notable exceptions of intrinsically disordered proteins, in general take their most stable conformation in the physiological condition to maintain their structural framework so that their…
The dynamics of folding of proteins is studied by means of a phenomenological master equation. The energy distribution is taken as a truncated exponential for the misfolded states plus a native state sitting below the continuum. The…
A kinetic model for the nucleation mechanism of protein folding is proposed. A protein is modeled as a heteropolymer consisting of hydrophobic and hydrophilic beads with equal constant bond lengths and bond angles. The total energy of the…
Many native structures of proteins accomodate complex topological motifs such as knots, lassos, and other geometrical entanglements. How proteins can fold quickly even in the presence of such topological obstacles is a debated question in…
Recent advances in computational power and simulation programs finally delivered the first examples of reversible folding for small proteins with an all-atom description. But having at hand the atomistic details of the process did not lead…
Mechanical stretching of secondary structures is studied through molecular dynamics simulations of a Go-like model. Force vs. displacement curves are studied as a function of the stiffness and velocity of the pulling device. The succession…
The folding vs. adsorption behaviour of a coarse-grained off-lattice protein model near an attractive surface is presented within the frame of a Multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations. In the polymer-surface model, the Lennard-Jones…
A new general algorithm for optimization of potential functions for protein folding is introduced. It is based upon gradient optimization of the thermodynamic stability of native folds of a training set of proteins with known structure. The…