Related papers: An Ising-Like model for protein mechanical unfoldi…
We investigate the work dissipated during the irreversible unfolding of single molecules by mechanical force, using the simplest model necessary to represent experimental data. The model consists of two levels (folded and unfolded states)…
Structural fluctuations in the thermal equilibrium of the kinesin motor domain are studied using a lattice protein model with Go interactions. By means of the multi-self-overlap ensemble (MSOE) Monte Carlo method and the principal component…
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…
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…
Reaching a ground state of a spin system is analogous to a protein evolving into its native state. We study the ``folding'' times for various random Ising spin systems and determine characteristic temperatures that relate to the…
The conformational dynamics of a single protein molecule in a shear flow is investigated using Brownian dynamics simulations. A structure-based coarse grained model of a protein is used. We consider two proteins, ubiquitin and integrin, and…
Repeat proteins are made with tandem copies of similar amino acid stretches that fold into elongated architectures. Due to their symmetry, these proteins constitute excellent model systems to investigate how evolution relates to structure,…
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…
A comparative classification scheme provides a good basis for several approaches to understand proteins, including prediction of relations between their structure and biological function. But it remains a challenge to combine a…
The nanomechanical response of a folded single protein, the natural nanomachine responsible for myriad biological processes, provides insight into its function. The conformational flexibility of a folded state, characterized by its…
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…
The process of protein folding from an unfolded state to a biologically active, folded conformation is governed by many parameters e.g the sequence of amino acids, intermolecular interactions, the solvent, temperature and chaperon…
In typical single-molecule force spectroscopy experiments the mechanical unfolding of molecular complexes or biomolecules is studied applying a force ramp to one end of the system while the other end is kept fixed in space. The…
The mechanical unfolding of a simple RNA hairpin and of a 236--bases portion of the Tetrahymena thermophila ribozyme is studied by means of an Ising--like model. Phase diagrams and free energy landscapes are computed exactly and suggest a…
We model protein folding as a physical stochastic process as follows. The unfolded protein chain is treated as a random coil described by SAW (self-avoiding walk). Folding is induced by hydrophobic forces and other interactions, such as…
Understanding protein folding has been one of the great challenges in biochemistry and molecular biophysics. Over the past 50 years, many thermodynamic and kinetic studies have been performed addressing the stability of globular proteins.…
We present a method to investigate the kinetics of protein folding on a long time-scale and the dynamics underlying the formation of secondary and tertiary structures during the entire reaction. The approach is based on the formal analogy…
Theory of multi-dimensional representation of free energy surface of protein folding is developed by adopting structural order parameters of multiple regions in protein as multiple coordinates. Various scenarios of folding are classified in…
We study the thermodynamical properties of a topology-based model proposed by Galzitskaya and Finkelstein for the description of protein folding. We devise and test three different mean-field approaches for the model, that simplify the…
Scaling of folding properties of proteins is studied in a toy system -- the lattice Go model with various two- and three- dimensional geometries of the maximally compact native states. Characteristic folding times grow as power laws with…