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In this work, we discovered a fundamental connection between selection for protein stability and emergence of preferred structures of proteins. Using standard exact 3-dimensional lattice model we evolve sequences starting from random ones…
The formation of quasi-spherical cages from protein building blocks is a remarkable self-assembly process in many natural systems, where a small number of elementary building blocks are assembled to build a highly symmetric icosahedral…
The respective roles of local and nonlocal interactions in the thermodynamic cooperativity of proteins are investigated using continuum (off-lattice) native-centric G\=o-like models with a coarse-grained C$_\alpha$ chain representation. We…
Mechanical stretching of six proteins is studied through molecular dynamics simulations. The model is Go-like, with Lennard-Jones interactions at native contacts. Low temperature unfolding scenarios are remarkably complex and sensitive to…
The primary structure of proteins, that is their sequence, represents one of the most abundant set of experimental data concerning biomolecules. The study of correlations in families of co--evolving proteins by means of an inverse…
The process of protein folding from an unfolded state to a biologically active, folded conformation is governed by many parameters e.g the sequence of amino acids, intermolecular interactions, the solvent, temperature and chaperon…
We report that protein confinement within nanoscopic vesicular compartments corresponds to a liquid-liquid phase transition with the protein/water within vesicle lumen interacting very differently than in bulk. We show this effect leads to…
Metamorphic proteins like Lymphotactin are a notable exception of the empirical principle that structured natural proteins possess a unique three dimensional structure. In particular, the human chemokine lymphotactin protein (Ltn) exists in…
In the framework of a lattice-model study of protein folding, we investigate the interplay between designability, thermodynamic stability, and kinetics. To be ``protein-like'', heteropolymers must be thermodynamically stable, stable against…
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…
We simulate the electrical properties of a device realized by a G protein coupled receptor (GPCR), embedded in its membrane and in contact with two metallic electrodes through which an external voltage is applied. To this purpose, recently,…
The $\alpha$ and $\beta$ subunits comprising the hexameric assembly of F1-ATPase share a high degree of structural identity, though low primary identity. Each subunit binds nucleotide in similar pockets, yet only $\beta$ subunits are…
The effect of temperature on mechanical unfolding of proteins is studied using a Go-like model with a realistic contact map and Lennard-Jones contact interactions. The behavior of the I27 domain of titin and its serial repeats is contrasted…
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…
Making use of a simplified model for protein folding, it can be shown that conformations which are particularly stable when their energy is minimized with respect to amino acid sequence (in the sense that they display a large energy gap to…
Protein folding cooperativity is defined by the nature of the finite-size thermodynamic transition exhibited upon folding: two-state transitions show a free energy barrier between the folded and unfolded ensembles, while downhill folding is…
Neither of the two prevalent theories, namely thermodynamic stability and kinetic stability, provides a comprehensive understanding of protein folding. The thermodynamic theory is misleading because it assumes that free energy is the…
We study a large data set of protein structure ensembles of very diverse sizes determined by nuclear magnetic resonance. By examining the distance-dependent correlations in the displacement of residues pairs and conducting finite size…
We derive an analytic expression for site-specific stationary distributions of amino acids from the Structurally Constrained Neutral (SCN) model of protein evolution with conservation of folding stability. The stationary distributions that…
Folding properties of a two-dimensional toy protein model containing only two amino-acid types, hydrophobic and hydrophilic, respectively, are analyzed. An efficient Monte Carlo procedure is employed to ensure that the ground states are…