Related papers: Protein Folding: From Classical Issues to a New Pe…
Binding interactions between proteins and other molecules mediate numerous cellular processes, including metabolism, signaling, and regulation of gene expression. These interactions evolve in response to changes in the protein's chemical or…
Simple two-state folding kinetics of many small single-domain proteins are characterized by chevron plots with linear folding and unfolding arms consistent with a two-state description of equilibrium thermodynamics. This phenomenon is…
We investigate the rate-length scaling law of protein folding, a key undetermined scaling law in the analytical theory of protein folding. We demonstrate that chain length is a dominant factor determining folding times, and that the…
In this paper we study the phenomenon of kinetic partitioning when a polypeptide chain has two ground state conformations one of which is more kinetically reachable than the other. This question is relevant to understand the phenomenology…
We explicitly show the connection between the protein folding problem and spin glass transition. This is then used to identify appropriate quantities that are required to describe the transition. A possible way of observing the spin glass…
The folding of a protein towards its native state is a rather complicated process. However there are empirical evidences that the folding time correlates with the contact order, a simple measure of the spatial organisation of the native…
The understanding, and even the description of protein folding is impeded by the complexity of the process. Much of this complexity can be described and understood by taking a statistical approach to the energetics of protein conformation,…
The thermodynamics of proteins indicate that folding/unfolding takes place either through stable intermediates or through a two-state process without intermediates. The rather short folding times of the two-state process indicate that…
Protein folding is the intricate process by which a linear sequence of amino acids self-assembles into a unique three-dimensional structure. Protein folding kinetics is the study of pathways and time-dependent mechanisms a protein undergoes…
A geometric analysis of protein folding, which complements many of the models in the literature, is presented. We examine the process from unfolded strand to the point where the strand becomes self-interacting. A central question is how it…
We solve a model that takes into account entropic barriers, frustration, and the organization of a protein-like molecule. For a chain of size $M$, there is an effective folding transition to an ordered structure. Without frustration, this…
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 consider the statistical mechanics of a full set of two-dimensional protein-like heteropolymers, whose thermodynamics is characterized by the coil-to-globular ($T_\theta$) and the folding ($T_f$) transition temperatures. For our model,…
Many native structures of proteins accomodate complex topological motifs such as knots, lassos, and other geometrical entanglements. How proteins can fold quickly even in the presence of such topological obstacles is a debated question in…
We carry out a theoretical study of the vibrational and relaxation properties of naturally-occurring proteins with the purpose of characterizing both the folding and equilibrium thermodynamics. By means of a suitable model we provide a full…
Since protein mutations are the main driving force of evolution at the molecular level, a proper analysis of them (and the factors controlling them) will enable us to find a response to several crucial queries in evolutionary biology. Among…
Globular proteins are expected to assume folds with fixed secondary structures, alpha-helices and beta-sheets. Fold-switching proteins challenge this expectation by remodeling their secondary and/or tertiary structures in response to…
The coil to globule transition of the polypeptide chain is the physical phenomenon behind the folding of globular proteins. Globular proteins with a single domain usually consist of about 30 to 100 amino acid residues, and this finite size…
In spite of decades of research, much remains to be discovered about folding: the detailed structure of the initial (unfolded) state, vestigial folding instructions remaining only in the unfolded state, the interaction of the molecule with…
The protein folding problem must ultimately be solved on all length scales from the atomic up through a hierarchy of complicated structures. By analyzing the stability of the folding process using physics and mathematics, this paper shows…