Related papers: How does the first water shell fold proteins so fa…
We study the dynamics of hydration water/protein association in folded proteins, using lysozyme and myoglobin as examples. Extensive molecular dynamics simulations are performed to identify underlying mechanisms of the dynamical transition…
Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to study the temperature-dependent dynamics and structures of the hydration shells of elastin-like and collagen-like peptides. For both model peptides, it is consistently observed that, upon…
Water plays a fundamental role in protein stability. However, the effect of the properties of water on the behaviour of proteins is only partially understood. Several theories have been proposed to give insight into the mechanisms of cold…
Studies of liquid water in its supercooled region have led to many insights into the structure and behavior of water. While bulk water freezes at its homogeneous nucleation temperature of approximately 235 K, for protein hydration water,…
The dynamics of a folded protein is studied in water and glycerol at a series of temperatures below and above their respective dynamical transition. The system is modeled in two distinct states whereby the protein is decoupled from the bulk…
We explain the physical basis of a model for small globular proteins with water interactions. The water is supposed to access the protein interior in an "all-or-none" manner during the unfolding of the protein chain. As a consequence of…
Supercooled water exhibits remarkably slow dynamics similar to the behavior observed for various glass-forming liquids. The local order of tetrahedral structures due to hydrogen-bonds (H-bonds) increases with decreasing temperature. Thus,…
The mechanism of cold- and pressure-denaturation are matter of debate. Some models propose that when denaturation occurs more hydrogen bonds between the molecules of hydration water are formed. Other models identify the cause in the density…
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…
Water is essential for the activity of proteins. However, the effect of the properties of water on the behavior of proteins is only partially understood. Recently, several experiments have investigated the relation between the dynamics of…
We present a novel statistical mechanics formalism for the theoretical description of the process of protein folding$\leftrightarrow$unfolding transition in water environment. The formalism is based on the construction of the partition…
Folding kinetics of a lattice model of protein is studied. It uses the Random Energy Model for the intrachain couplings and a temperature dependent free energy of solvation derived from a realistic hydration model of apolar solutes. The…
The interplay between structure-search of the native structure and desolvation in protein folding has been explored using a minimalist model. These results support a folding mechanism where most of the structural formation of the protein is…
How proteins fold remains a central unsolved problem in biology. While the idea of a folding code embedded in the amino acid sequence was introduced more than 6 decades ago, this code remains undefined. While we now have powerful predictive…
We investigated the impact of hydrodynamic interactions (HI) on protein folding using a coarse-grained model. The extent of the impact of hydrodynamic interactions, whether it accelerates, retards, or has no effect on protein folding, has…
The molecular mechanism of the solvent motion that is required to instigate the protein structural relaxation above a critical hydration level or transition temperature has yet to be determined. In this work we use quasi-elastic neutron…
Proteins work only if folded in their native state, but changes in temperature T and pressure P induce their unfolding. Therefore for each protein there is a stability region (SR) in the T-P thermodynamic plane outside which the biomolecule…
Theoretical studies of protein folding on lattice models relie on the assumption that water close to amino-acids is always in thermal equilibrium all along the folding pathway. Within this framework, it has always been considered that…
Hydrogen bonds are a common feature in protein folding and aggregation. Due to their chemical peculiarities in terms of strength and directionality, a particular attention must be paid to the definition of the hydrogen bond potential…
A reduced model, which can fold both helix and sheet structures, is proposed to study the problem of protein folding. The goal of this model is to find an unbiased effective potential that has included the effects of water and at the same…