Related papers: Factors Governing the Foldability of Proteins
In this letter, the possible dynamic scaling properties of protein molecules in folding are investigated theoretically by assuming that the protein molecules are percolated networks. It is shown that the fractal character and the fractal…
Scaling of folding times in Go models of proteins and of decoy structures with the Lennard-Jones potentials in the native contacts reveal %robust power law trends when studied under optimal folding conditions. The power law exponent depends…
We present a unified framework for folding kinetics of proteins and RNA. The basis for this framework relies on the notion of topological frustration, which gives rise to several competing basins of attraction (CBA) in addition to the…
A coarse-grained off-lattice model that is not biased in any way to the native state is proposed to fold proteins. To predict the native structure in a reasonable time, the model has included the essential effects of water in an effective…
We propose a universal elastic energy for proteins, which depends only on the radius of gyration $R_{g}$ and the residue number $N$. It is constructed using physical arguments based on the hydrophobic effect and hydrogen bonding. Adjustable…
Single-molecule experiments provide new insights into biological processes hitherto not accessible by measurements performed on bulk systems. We report on a study of the kinetics of a triple-branch DNA molecule with four conformational…
We show that the folding rates (k_F) of RNA are determined by N, the number of nucleotides. By assuming that the distribution of free energy barriers separating the folded and the unfolded states is Gaussian, which follows from central…
Natural protein sequences somehow encode the structural forms that these molecules adopt. Recent developments in structure-prediction are agnostic to the mechanisms by which proteins fold and represent them as static objects. However, the…
Natural protein sequences contain a record of their history. A common constraint in a given protein family is the ability to fold to specific structures, and it has been shown possible to infer the main native ensemble by analyzing…
Many small proteins fold via a first-order "all-or-none" transition directly from an expanded coil to a compact native state. Here we study an analogous direct freezing transition from an expanded coil to a compact crystallite for a simple…
Two-state cooperativity is an important characteristic in protein folding. It is defined by a depletion of states lying energetically between folded and unfolded conformations. While there are different ways to test for two-state…
The processes by which protein sidechains reach equilibrium during a folding reaction are investigated using both lattice and all-atom simulations. We find that rates of sidechain relaxation exhibit a distribution over the protein…
We propose a protein model based on a hierarchy of constraints that force the protein to follow certain pathways when changing conformation. The model exhibits a first order phase transition, cooperativity and is exactly solvable. It also…
Using a simple hydrophobic/polar protein model, we perform a Monte Carlo study of the thermodynamics and kinetics of binding to a target structure for two closely related sequences, one of which has a unique folded state while the other is…
Three-dimensional shell-like structures can be obtained spontaneously at the microscale from the self-folding of 2D templates of rigid panels. At least for simple structures, the motion of each panel is consistent with a Brownian process…
We analyze the dependence of thermal denaturation transition and folding rates of globular proteins on the number of amino acid residues, N. Using lattice Go models we show that DeltaT/T_F ~ N^-1, where T_F is the folding transition…
The energy for protein folding arises from multiple sources and is not large in total. In spite of the many specific successes of energy landscape and other approaches, there still seems to be some missing guiding factor that explains how…
Using a structure-based coarse-grained model of proteins, we study the mechanism of unfolding of knotted proteins through heating. We find that the dominant mechanisms of unfolding depend on the temperature applied and are generally…
We consider a lattice model of a semiflexible homopolymer chain in a bad solvent. Beside the temperature $T$, this model is described by (i) a curvature energy $\varepsilon_h$, representing the stiffness of the chain (ii) a…
As an example of topic where biology and physics meet, we present the issue of protein folding and stability, and the development of thermodynamics-based bioinformatics tools that predict the stability and thermal resistance of proteins and…