Related papers: Inferring protein folding mechanisms from natural …
Proteins created by combinatorial methods in vitro are an important source of information for understanding sequence-structure-function relationships. Alignments of folded proteins from combinatorial libraries can be analyzed using methods…
The intricate three-dimensional geometries of protein tertiary structures underlie protein function and emerge through a folding process from one-dimensional chains of amino acids. The exact spatial sequence and configuration of amino…
In the course of evolution, proteins undergo important changes in their amino acid sequences, while their three-dimensional folded structure and their biological function remain remarkably conserved. Thanks to modern sequencing techniques,…
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…
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…
The number of protein structures is far less than the number of sequences. By imposing simple generic features of proteins (low energy and compaction) on all possible sequences we show that the structure space is sparse compared to the…
We propose a model that explains the hierarchical organization of proteins in fold families. The model, which is based on the evolutionary selection of proteins by their native state stability, reproduces patterns of amino acids conserved…
Recent experimental results suggest that the native fold, or topology, plays a primary role in determining the structure of the transition state ensemble, at least for small fast folding proteins. To investigate the extent of the…
Cotranslational folding depends on the folding speed and stability of the nascent protein. It remains difficult, however, to predict which proteins cotranslationally fold. Here, we simulate evolution of model proteins to investigate how…
Proteins employ the information stored in the genetic code and translated into their sequences to carry out well-defined functions in the cellular environment. The possibility to encode for such functions is controlled by the balance…
The sequence of a protein is not only constrained by its physical and biochemical properties under current selection, but also by features of its past evolutionary history. Understanding the extent and the form that these evolutionary…
Extensive Monte Carlo folding simulations for four proteins of various structural classes are carried out, using a single atomistic potential. In all cases, collapse occurs at a very early stage, and proteins fold into their native-like…
We propose a protein model based on a hierarchy of constraints that force the protein to follow certain pathways when changing conformation. The model exhibits a first order phase transition, cooperativity and is exactly solvable. It also…
Natural proteins fold to a unique, thermodynamically dominant state. Modeling of the folding process and prediction of the native fold of proteins are two major unsolved problems in biophysics. Here, we show successful all-atom ab initio…
One of the most puzzling and unsolved challenges in molecular biology is understanding how proteins fold. Despite having advanced predictive tools that can accurately estimate the native structures of proteins, we still lack a comprehensive…
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…
The protein folding problem has attracted an increasing attention from physicists. The problem has a flavor of statistical mechanics, but possesses the most common feature of most biological problems -- the profound effects of evolution. I…
Focusing on a small set of proteins that i) fold in a concerted, all-or-none fashion and ii) do not contain knots or slipknots, we show that the Gauss linking integral, the torsion and the number of sequence-distant contacts provide…
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…
A general theoretical framework is developed using free energy functional methods to understand the effects of heterogeneity in the folding of a well-designed protein. Native energetic heterogeneity arising from non-uniformity in native…