Related papers: How does the first water shell fold proteins so fa…
Water and glycerol are well-known to facilitate the structural relaxation of amorphous protein matrices. However, several studies evidenced that they may also limit fast ($\sim$ pico-nanosecond, ps-ns) and small-amplitude ($\sim$ \AA )…
Water hydrating phospholipid membranes determine their stability and function, as well as their interaction with other molecules. In this article we study, using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, the rotational and translational…
At low temperatures proteins exist in a glassy state, a state which has no conformational flexibility and shows no biological functions. In a hydrated protein, at and above 220 K, this flexibility is restored and the protein is able to…
Protein-protein binding enables orderly and lawful biological self-organization, and is therefore considered a miracle of nature. Protein-protein binding is steered by electrostatic forces, hydrogen bonding, van der Waals force, and…
We use molecular dynamics computer simulations and nuclear magnetic resonance experiments to investigate the dynamics of water at interfaces of molecular roughness and low mobility. We find that, when approaching such interfaces, the…
Water plays a major role in bio-systems, greatly contributing to determine their structure, stability and even function. It is well know, for instance, that proteins require a minimum amount of water to be functionally active. Since the…
A variety of neurodegenerative diseases are associated with the formation of amyloid plaques. Our incomplete understanding of this process underscores the need to decipher the principles governing protein aggregation. Most experimental and…
The aqueous solvent profoundly influences protein folding, yet its effects are relatively poorly understood. In this study, we investigate the impact of solvation on the folding of lattice proteins by using Monte Carlo simulations. The…
Liquid water is reluctant to lose hydrogen-bond coordination. Here we reveal that it also demands contraction and reorientation of the second molecular shell to compensate for coordination defects. Such molecular principle will be shown to…
Molecular dynamics simulations have revealed a dramatic increase, with increasing temperature, of the amplitude of electrostatic fluctuations caused by water at the active site of metalloprotein plastocyanin. The increased breadth of…
Interest in the protein folding problem has motivated a wide range of theoretical and experimental studies of the kinetics of the collapse of flexible homopolymers. In this Paper a phenomenological model is proposed for the kinetics of the…
We employ simulations of model proteins to study folding on rugged energy landscapes. We construct ``first-passage'' networks as the system transitions from unfolded to native states. The nodes and bonds in these networks correspond to…
A theoretical framework is developed to study the dynamics of protein folding. The key insight is that the search for the native protein conformation is influenced by the rate r at which external parameters, such as temperature, chemical…
The problem of the helix-coil transition of biopolymers in explicit solvents, like water, with the ability for hydrogen bonding with solvent is addressed analytically using a suitably modified version of the Generalized Model of Polypeptide…
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…
These lectures will address two questions. Is there a simple variational principle underlying the existence of secondary motifs in the native state of proteins? Is there a general approach which can qualitatively capture the salient…
We investigate dynamical coupling between water and amino acid side-chain residues in solvation dynamics by selecting residues often used as natural probes, namely tryptophan, tyrosine and histidine, located at different positions on…
A hydrophilic liquid, such as water, forms hydrogen bonds with a hydrophilic substrate. The strength and locality of the hydrogen bonding interactions prohibit slip of the liquid over the substrate. The question then arises how the contact…
The processes by which protein sidechains reach equilibrium during a folding reaction are investigated using both lattice and all-atom simulations. We find that rates of sidechain relaxation exhibit a distribution over the protein…
Understanding how monomeric proteins fold under in vitro conditions is crucial to describing their functions in the cellular context. Significant advances both in theory and experiments have resulted in a conceptual framework for describing…