Related papers: An Ising-Like model for protein mechanical unfoldi…
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…
Mechanical unfolding of several domains of calmodulin and titin is studied using a Go-like model with a realistic contact map and Lennard-Jones contact interactions. It is shown that this simple model captures the experimentally observed…
The authors address the problem of downhill protein folding in the framework of a simple statistical mechanical model, which allows an exact solution for the equilibrium and a semianalytical treatment of the kinetics. Focusing on protein…
Mechanical unfolding of polyproteins by force spectroscopy provides valuable insight into their free energy landscapes. Most phenomenological models of the unfolding process are two-state and/or one dimensional, with the details of the…
Mechanical stretching of six proteins is studied through molecular dynamics simulations. The model is Go-like, with Lennard-Jones interactions at native contacts. Low temperature unfolding scenarios are remarkably complex and sensitive to…
Neither of the two prevalent theories, namely thermodynamic stability and kinetic stability, provides a comprehensive understanding of protein folding. The thermodynamic theory is misleading because it assumes that free energy is the…
Mechanical stretching of secondary structures is studied through molecular dynamics simulations of a Go-like model. Force vs. displacement curves are studied as a function of the stiffness and velocity of the pulling device. The succession…
Using an Ising-like model of protein mechanical unfolding, we introduce a diffusive dynamics on its exactly known free energy profile, reducing the nonequilibrium dynamics of the model to a biased random walk. As an illustration, the model…
We used the atomic force microscope to manipulate and unfold individual molecules of the titin I27 domain and reconstructed its free energy surface using Jarzynski's equality. The free energy surface for both stretching and unfolding was…
Background: Many attempts have been made to resolve in time the folding of model proteins in computer simulations. Different computational approaches have emerged. Some of these approaches suffer from the insensitivity to the geometrical…
I study the properties of the equilibrium probability distribution of a protein folding model originally introduced by Wako and Saito, and later reconsidered by Munoz and Eaton. The model is a one-dimensional model with binary variables and…
A theoretical analysis of the unfolding pathway of simple modular proteins in length- controlled pulling experiments is put forward. Within this framework, we predict the first module to unfold in a chain of identical units, emphasizing the…
We have applied a simple statistical-mechanics G$\bar{\text{o}}$-like model to the analysis of the PIN1 WW domain, resorting to Mean Field and Monte Carlo techniques to characterize its thermodynamics, and comparing the results with the…
We present a statistical mechanics treatment of the stability of globular proteins which takes explicitly into account the coupling between the protein and water degrees of freedom. This allows us to describe both the cold and the warm…
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…
Cooperativity is a hallmark of proteins, many of which show a modular architecture comprising discrete structural domains. Detecting and describing dynamic couplings between structural regions is difficult in view of the many-body nature of…
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…
Equilibrium and out-of-equilibrium transitions of an off-lattice protein model have been identified and studied. In particular, the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the protein undergoing mechanical unfolding is investigated, and by using a…
We review theoretical approaches, experiments and numerical simulations that have been recently proposed to investigate the folding problem in single-domain proteins. From a theoretical point of view, we emphasize the energy landscape…
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…