Related papers: Reconstructing the free energy landscape of a poly…
We present a statistical mechanics approach to the protein folding problem. We first review some of the basic properties of proteins, and introduce some physical models to describe their thermodynamics. These models rely on a random…
In this paper we study multi-matrix models whose potentials are perturbations of the quadratic potential associated with independent GUE random matrices. More precisely, we compute the free energy and the expectation of the trace of…
In single-molecule force spectroscopy experiments, the dependence of the mean unfolding force on the loading rate is used for obtaining information about the energetic and dynamic properties of the system under study. However, it is crucial…
Natively unfolded proteins exist as an ensemble of flexible conformations lacking a well defined tertiary structure along a large portion of their polypeptide chain. Despite the absence of a stable configuration, they are involved in…
The biological activity and functional specificity of proteins depend on their native three-dimensional structures determined by inter- and intra-molecular interactions. In this paper, we investigate the geometrical factor of protein…
Cooperativity is a hallmark of proteins, many of which show a modular architecture comprising discrete structural domains. Detecting and describing dynamic couplings between structural regions is difficult in view of the many-body nature of…
This paper discusses the free energy of complex dislocation microstructures, which is a fundamental property of continuum plasticity. In the past, multiple models of the self energy of dislocations have been proposed in the literature that…
Exact numerical methods and stochastic simulation methods are developed to study the force stretching single RNA issue on the secondary structure level in equilibrium. By computing the force-extension curves on the constant force and the…
One of the most intriguing results of single molecule experiments on proteins and nucleic acids is the discovery of functional heterogeneity: the observation that complex cellular machines exhibit multiple, biologically active…
In this study we evaluate, at full atomic detail, the folding processes of two small helical proteins, the B domain of protein A and the Villin headpiece. Folding kinetics are studied by performing a large number of ab initio Monte Carlo…
A simple model for the force-dependent unwinding and rewinding rates of the nucleosome inner turn is constructed and quantitatively compared to the results of recent measurements [A. H. Mack et al., J. Mol. Biol. 423, 687 (2012)]. First, a…
Mechanical unfolding of RNA structures, ranging from hairpins to ribozymes, using laser optical tweezer (LOT) experiments have begun to reveal the features of the energy landscape that cannot be easily explored using conventional…
We present a model, based on symmetry and geometry, for proteins. Using elementary ideas from mathematics and physics, we derive the geometries of discrete helices and sheets. We postulate a compatible solvent-mediated emergent pairwise…
Natural protein sequences that self-assemble to form globular structures are compact with high packing densities in the folded states. It is known that proteins unfold upon addition of denaturants, adopting random coil structures. The…
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…
We introduce a simple theoretical model, the Freely Jointed Chain with quenched hinges (qFJC), which captures the quenched disorder in the local bending stiffness of the polymer. In this article, we analyze the tensile elasticity of the…
Metadynamics is a powerful computational tool to obtain the free energy landscape of complex systems. The Monte Carlo algorithm has proven useful to calculate thermodynamic quantities associated with simplified models of proteins, and thus…
Free energies play a central role in characterising the behaviour of chemical systems and are among the most important quantities that can be calculated by molecular dynamics simulations. Solvation free energies in various organic solvents,…
A coarse-grained computational procedure based on the Finite Element Method is proposed to calculate the normal modes and mechanical response of proteins and their supramolecular assemblies. Motivated by the elastic network model, proteins…
In recent years single molecule force spectroscopy has opened a new avenue to provide profiles of the complex energy landscape of biomolecules. In this field, quantitative analyses of the data employing sound theoretical models, have played…