Related papers: Why does a protein fold?
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
Natural protein sequences that self-assemble to form globular structures are compact with high packing densities in the folded states. It is known that proteins unfold upon addition of denaturants, adopting random coil structures. The…
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…
We offer simple solutions to three kinematic problems that occur in the folding of proteins. We show how to construct suitably local elementary Monte Carlo moves, how to close a loop, and how to fold a loop without breaking the bond that…
Two proteins, one belonging to the mainly alpha class and the other belonging to the alpha/beta class, are selected to test a kinetic mechanism for protein folding. Targeted molecular dynamics is applied to generate folding pathways for…
While all the information required for the folding of a protein is contained in its amino acid sequence, one has not yet learned how to extract this information to predict the three--dimensional, biologically active, native conformation of…
One of the main concerns of Anfinsen was to reveal the connection between the amino acid sequence and their biologically active conformation. This search gave rise to two crucial questions in structural biology, namely, why the proteins…
We discuss recent theoretical developments in the study of simple lattice models of proteins. Such models are designed to understand general features of protein structures and mechanism of folding. Among the topics covered are (i) the use…
Exploring and understanding the protein-folding problem has been a long-standing challenge in molecular biology. Here, using molecular dynamics simulation, we reveal how parallel distributed adjacent planar peptide groups of unfolded…
Predicting the three-dimensional (3D) functional structures of proteins remains an important computational milestone in molecular biology to be achieved. This feat is hinged on a clear understanding of the mechanism which proteins use to…
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…
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…
Proteins must fold quickly to acquire their biologically functional three-dimensional native structures. Hence, these are mainly stabilized by local contacts, while intricate topologies such as knots are rare. Here, we reveal the existence…
The prediction of the three-dimensional native structure of proteins from the knowledge of their amino acid sequence, known as the protein folding problem, is one of the most important yet unsolved issues of modern science. Since the…
For the vast majority of naturally occurring, small, single domain proteins folding is often described as a two-state process that lacks detectable intermediates. This observation has often been rationalized on the basis of a nucleation…