Related papers: Is there a universality of the helix-coil transiti…
The authors study the short-time dynamics of helix-forming polypeptide chains using an all-atom representation of the molecules and an implicit solvation model to approximate the interaction with the surrounding solvent. The results confirm…
We report results from multicanonical simulations of poly-alanine. Homopolymers of up to 30 amino acids were considered and various thermodynamic quantities as a function of temperature calculated. We study the nature of the observed…
We study helix-coil transitions in an all-atom model of polyalanine. Molecules of up to length 30 residues are investigated by multicanonical simulations. Results from two implicit solvent models are compared with each other and with that…
Thermodynamics of helix-coil transitions in amino-acid homo-oligomers are studied by the recently proposed multicanonical algorithms. Homo-oligomers of length 10 are considered for three characteristic amino acids, alanine (helix former),…
In this paper we summarize some results of our theoretical investigations of helix-coil transition both in single-strand (polypeptides) and two-strand (polynucleotides) macromolecules. The Hamiltonian does not contain any parameter designed…
In this paper we suggest a theoretical method based on the statistical mechanics for treating the alpha-helix-random coil transition in alanine polypeptides. We consider this process as a first-order phase transition and develop a theory…
In view of the important role helix-sheet transitions play in protein aggregation, we introduce a simple model to study secondary structural transitions of helix-coil-sheet systems using a Potts model starting with an effective Hamiltonian.…
We compare two recently proposed methods for the characterization of phase transitions in small systems. The validity and usefulness of these approaches are studied for the case of the q=4 and q=5 Potts model, i.e. systems where a…
In this work, the nonequilibrium pathways of the collapse of the helix-forming biopolymer polyalanine are investigated. To this end, the full time evolution of the helix-coil transition is simulated using molecular dynamics simulations. At…
In the present paper we present results of calculations obtained with the use of the theoretical method described in our preceding paper [1] and perform detail analysis of alpha helix-random coil transition in alanine polypeptides of…
Thermodynamical properties of the helix-coil transition were successfully described in the past by the model of Lifson, Poland and Sheraga. Here we compute the corresponding structure factor and show that it possesses a universal scaling…
Different aspects of protein folding are illustrated by simplified polymer models. Stressing the diversity of side chains (residues) leads one to view folding as the freezing transition of an heteropolymer. Technically, the most common…
We explain the physical basis of a model for small globular proteins with water interactions. The water is supposed to access the protein interior in an "all-or-none" manner during the unfolding of the protein chain. As a consequence of…
An atomic protein model with a minimalistic potential is developed and then tested on an alpha-helix and a beta-hairpin, using exactly the same parameters for both peptides. We find that melting curves for these sequences to a good…
We present the exact solution of a microscopic statistical mechanical model for the transformation of a long polypeptide between an unstructured coil conformation and an $\alpha$-helix conformation. The polypeptide is assumed to be adsorbed…
The basic models of helix-coil transitions in biomolecules are introduced. These include phenomenological, zipper (Bragg-Zimm) models of polypeptides, loop-entropy (Poland-Scheraga) and Hamiltonian (Peyrard-Bishop) models of homogeneous DNA…
We analyze a model statistical description of the polypeptide chain helix-coil transition, where we take into account the specificity of its primary sequence, as quantified by the phase space volume ratio of the number of all accessible…
We report on multicanonical simulations of the helix-coil transition of a polypeptide. The nature of this transition was studied by calculating partition function zeros and the finite-size scaling of various quantities. Estimates for…
Based on the Zimm-Bragg model we study cooperative helix-coil transition driven by a finite-speed change of temperature. There is an asymmetry between the coil-to-helix and helix-to-coil transition: the latter is displayed already for…
A simplified model for the closed circular DNA (ccDNA) is proposed to describe some specific features of the helix-coil transition in such molecule. The Hamiltonian of ccDNA is related to the one introduced earlier for the linear DNA. The…