Related papers: Thermodynamic control and dynamical regimes in pro…
For many biological applications of molecular dynamics (MD) the importance of good sampling in conformational space makes it necessary to eliminate the fastest motions from the system in order to increase the time step. An accurate…
Proteins are composed of chains of amino acids that fold into complex three-dimensional structures. Several key features, such as the radius of gyration, fraction of core amino acids $f_{\rm core}$, packing fraction $\langle \phi\rangle$ of…
We develop a theoretical approach to the protein folding problem based on out-of-equilibrium stochastic dynamics. Within this framework, the computational difficulties related to the existence of large time scale gaps in the protein folding…
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…
Understanding the protein folding process is an outstanding issue in biophysics; recent developments in molecular dynamics simulation have provided insights into this phenomenon. However, the large freedom of atomic motion hinders the…
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…
In this study we evaluate, at full atomic detail, the folding processes of two small helical proteins, the B domain of protein A and the Villin headpiece. Folding kinetics are studied by performing a large number of ab initio Monte Carlo…
Here we present an approximate analytical theory for the relationship between a protein structure's contact matrix and the shape of its energy spectrum in amino acid sequence space. We demonstrate a dependence of the number of sequences of…
The conformational dynamics of single-stranded nucleic acids are fundamental for nucleic acid folding and function. However, their elementary chain dynamics have been difficult to resolve experimentally. Here we employ a combination of…
In order to elucidate the role of the native state topology and the stability of subdomains in protein folding, we investigate free energy landscape of human lysozyme, which is composed of two subdomains, by Monte Carlo simulations. A…
We have used kinetic Monte Carlo simulations to study the kinetics of unfolding of cross-linked polymer chains under mechanical loading. As the ends of a chain are pulled apart, the force transmitted by each crosslink increases until it…
Kinetics of folding of a protein held in a force-clamp are compared to an unconstrained folding. The comparison is made within a simple topology-based dynamical model of ubiquitin. We demonstrate that the experimentally observed variations…
Proteins work only if folded in their native state, but changes in temperature T and pressure P induce their unfolding. Therefore for each protein there is a stability region (SR) in the T-P thermodynamic plane outside which the biomolecule…
The mutation and selection of regulatory DNA sequences is presented as an ideal model system of molecular evolution where genotype, phenotype, and fitness can be explicitly and independently characterized. In this theoretical study, we…
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…
Protein folds are highly designable, in the sense that many sequences fold to the same conformation. In the present work we derive an expression for the designability in a 20 letter lattice model of proteins which, relying only on the…
Protein structures in nature often exhibit a high degree of regularity (secondary structures, tertiary symmetries, etc.) absent in random compact conformations. We demonstrate in a simple lattice model of protein folding that structural…
A phenomenological model hamiltonian to describe the folding of a protein with any given sequence is proposed. The protein is thought of as a collection of pieces of helices; as a consequence its configuration space increases with the…
Molecular dynamics simulations of folding in an off-lattice protein model reveal a nucleation scenario, in which a few well-defined contacts are formed with high probability in the transition state ensemble of conformations. Their…
This paper presents a two-phase protein folding optimization on a three-dimensional AB off-lattice model. The first phase is responsible for forming conformations with a good hydrophobic core or a set of compact hydrophobic amino acid…