Related papers: Tightening the knot in phytochrome by single molec…
Single molecule force spectroscopy reveals unfolding of domains in titin upon stretching. We provide a theoretical framework for these experiments by computing the phase diagrams for force-induced unfolding of single domain proteins using…
Knotted proteins embed a physical (i.e., open) knot within their native structures. For decades, significant effort has been devoted to elucidating the functional role of knots in proteins, yet no consensus has been reached. Here, using…
Single-molecule atomic force spectroscopy probes elastic properties of titin, ubiquitin and other relevant proteins. We explain bioprotein folding dynamics under both length- and force-clamp by modeling polyprotein modules as particles in a…
Using a structure-based coarse-grained model of proteins, we study the mechanism of unfolding of knotted proteins through heating. We find that the dominant mechanisms of unfolding depend on the temperature applied and are generally…
Approximately 1% of the known protein structures display knotted configurations in their native fold but their function is not understood. It has been speculated that the entanglement may inhibit mechanical protein unfolding or transport,…
Proteins can sometimes be knotted, and for many reasons the study of knotted proteins is rapidly becoming very important. For example, it has been proposed that a knot increases the stability of a protein. Knots may also alter enzymatic…
A DNA-protein complex modelled by a semiflexible chain and an attractive spherical core is studied in the situation when an external stretching force is acting on one end monomer of the chain while the other end monomer is kept fixed in…
Knots in proteins have been proposed to resist proteasomal degradation. Ample evidence associates proteasomal degradation with neurodegeneration. One interesting possibility is that indeed knotted conformers stall this machinery leading to…
DNA unzipping by nanopore translocation has implications in diverse contexts, from polymer physics to single-molecule manipulation to DNA-enzyme interactions in biological systems. Here we use molecular dynamics simulations and a…
With the help of force spectroscopy, several analytical theories aim at estimating the rate coefficient of folding for various proteins. Nevertheless, a chief bottleneck lies in the fact that there is still no perfect consensus on how does…
In the current AFM experiments the distribution of unfolding times, P(t), is measured by applying a constant stretching force f_s from which the apparent unfolding rate is obtained. To describe the complexity of the underlying energy…
Motivated by recent advances in single molecule manipulation techniques that enabled several groups to tie knots in individual polymer strands and to monitor their dynamics, we have used computer simulations to study "friction knots"…
The ongoing effort to detect and characterize physical entanglement in biopolymers has so far established that knots are present in many globular proteins and also abound in viral DNA packaged inside bacteriophages. RNA molecules, on the…
Although known that single domain proteins fold and unfold by parallel pathways, demonstration of this expectation has been difficult to establish in experiments. Unfolding rate, $k_\mathrm{u}(f)$, as a function of force $f$, obtained in…
We report on atomistic simulation of the folding of a natively-knotted protein, MJ0366, based on a realistic force field. To the best of our knowledge this is the first reported effort where a realistic force field is used to investigate…
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 study theoretically the denaturation of single RNA molecules by mechanical stretching, focusing on signatures of the (un)folding pathway in molecular fluctuations. Our model describes the interactions between nucleotides by incorporating…
The computer artificial intelligence system AlphaFold has recently predicted previously unknown three-dimensional structures of thousands of proteins. Focusing on the subset with high-confidence scores, we algorithmically analyze these…
Deviations from linearity in the dependence of the logarithm of protein unfolding rates, $\log k_u(f)$, as a function of mechanical force, $f$, measurable in single molecule experiments, can arise for many reasons. In particular, upward…
Recent studies classify the topology of proteins by analysing the distribution of their projections using knotoids. The approximation of this distribution depends on the number of projection directions that are sampled. Here we investigate…