Related papers: Modeling hydration water and its role in polymer f…
We introduce an exactly solvable statistical-mechanical model of the hydration of non-polar compounds, based on grouping water molecules in clusters where hydrogen bonds and isotropic interactions occur; interactions between clusters are…
Hydrophobic interactions provide driving forces for protein folding, membrane formation, and oil-water separation. Motivated by information theory, the poorly understood nonpolar solute interactions in water are investigated. A simple…
Conformational transitions of flexible molecules, especially those driven by hydrophobic effects, tend to be hindered by desolvation barriers. For such transitions, it is thus important to characterize and understand the interplay between…
The solvation of charged, nanometer-sized spherical solutes in water, and the effective, solvent-induced force between two such solutes are investigated by constant temperature and pressure Molecular Dynamics simulations of model solutes…
We address the problem of inverse polymer swelling. This phenomenon, in which a collapsed polymer chain swells upon decreasing temperature, can be observed experimentally in so-called thermoreversible homopolymers in aqueous solution, and…
We present results from extensive molecular dynamics simulations of collapse transitions of hydrophobic polymers in explicit water focused on understanding effects of lengthscale of the hydrophobic surface and of attractive interactions on…
Unstructured proteins can modulate cellular responses to environmental conditions by undergoing coil-globule transitions and phase separation. However, the molecular mechanisms of these phenomena still need to be fully understood. Here, we…
The interplay between structure-search of the native structure and desolvation in protein folding has been explored using a minimalist model. These results support a folding mechanism where most of the structural formation of the protein is…
A comprehensive, semi-quantitative model for the thermodynamics of hydrophobic solvation is presented. The model is based on a very simple premise suggested by the scaled particle theory and treats both solute and solvent molecules as hard…
We define a lattice model for the interaction of a polymer with water. We solve the model in a suitable approximation. In the case of a non-polar homopolymer, for reasonable values of the parameters, the polymer is found in a non-compact…
We present an overview of the recent progress that has been made in understanding the origin of hydrophobic interactions. We discuss the different character of the solvation behavior of apolar solutes at small and large length scales. We…
We have used computer simulation to study the collapse of a hydrophobic chain in water. We find that the mechanism of collapse is much like that of a first order phase transition. The evaporation of water in the vicinity of the polymer…
The hydrophobic effect stabilizes the native structure of proteins by minimizing the unfavourable interactions between hydrophobic residues and water through the formation of a hydrophobic core. Here we include the entropic and enthalpic…
Folding channels and free-energy landscapes of hydrophobic-polar heteropolymers are discussed on the basis of a minimalistic off-lattice coarse-grained model. We investigate how rearrangements of hydrophobic and polar monomers in a…
A theoretical approach is developed to quantify hydrophobic hydration and interactions on a molecular scale, with the goal of gaining insight into the molecular origins of hydrophobic effects. The model is based on the fundamental relation…
In suitable environments, proteins, nucleic acids and certain synthetic polymers fold into unique conformations. This work shows that it is possible to construct lattice models of foldable heteropolymers by expressing the energy only in…
Water and water-mediated interactions determine thermodynamic and kinetics of protein folding, protein aggregation and self-assembly in confined spaces. To obtain insights into the role of water in the context of folding problems, we…
We present results of Monte Carlo computer simulations of a coarse-grained hydrophobic-polar Go-like heteropolymer model and discuss thermodynamic properties and kinetics of an exemplified heteropolymer, exhibiting two-state folding…
In a previous work, we investigated a two-dimensional lattice-fluid model, displaying some waterlike thermodynamic anomalies. The model, defined on a triangular lattice, is now extended to aqueous solutions with apolar species. Water…
Hydration of hydrophobic solutes in water is the cause of different phenomena, including the hydrophobic heat-capacity anomaly, which are not yet fully understood. Because of its topicality, there has recently been growing interest in the…