Related papers: Internal protein dynamics shifts the distance to t…
Stretching of a protein by a fluid flow is compared to that in a force-clamp apparatus. The comparison is made within a simple topology-based dynamical model of a protein in which the effects of the flow are implemented using Langevin…
The folding dynamics of small single-domain proteins is a current focus of simulations and experiments. Many of these proteins are 'two-state folders', i.e. proteins that fold rather directly from the denatured state to the native state,…
A coarse-grained variational model is used to investigate the polymer dynamics of barrier crossing for a diverse set of two-state folding proteins. The model gives reliable folding rate predictions provided excluded volume terms that induce…
Biological forces govern essential cellular and molecular processes in all living organisms. Many cellular forces, e.g. those generated in cyclic conformational changes of biological machines, have repetitive components. However, little is…
We study the conformations of polymer chains in a poor solvent, with and without bending rigidity, by means of a simple statistical mechanics model. This model can be exactly solved for chains of length up to N=55 using exact enumeration…
An all-atom model of proteins is used to show that the same sequence of amino acids can have many alternative structures, that are very distant from, and that can be as stable as, the corresponding native structure. Such alternative…
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…
The dynamics of folding of proteins is studied by means of a phenomenological master equation. The energy distribution is taken as a truncated exponential for the misfolded states plus a native state sitting below the continuum. The…
The thermodynamics of proteins indicate that folding/unfolding takes place either through stable intermediates or through a two-state process without intermediates. The rather short folding times of the two-state process indicate that…
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…
The folding dynamics of proteins at the single molecule level has been studied with single-molecule force spectroscopy (SMFS) experiments for twenty years, but a common standardized method for the analysis of the collected data and for the…
Time-resolved single-molecule biophysical experiments yield data that contain a wealth of dynamic information, in addition to the equilibrium distributions derived from histograms of the time series. In typical force spectroscopic setups…
Many aspects of the study of protein folding and dynamics have been affected by the recent advances in machine learning. Methods for the prediction of protein structures from their sequences are now heavily based on machine learning tools.…
A simple model for the force-dependent unwinding and rewinding rates of the nucleosome inner turn is constructed and quantitatively compared to the results of recent measurements [A. H. Mack et al., J. Mol. Biol. 423, 687 (2012)]. First, a…
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…
We propose a general multiscale approach for the mechanical behavior of three-dimensional networks of macromolecules undergoing strain-induced unfolding. Starting from a (statistically based) energetic analysis of the macromolecule…
Curvatures in the most probable rupture force ($f^*$) versus log-loading rate ($\log{r_f}$) observed in dynamic force spectroscopy (DFS) on biomolecular complexes are interpreted using a one-dimensional free energy profile with multiple…
Single-molecule force spectroscopy has opened a new field of research in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. Pulling experiments on individual proteins permit us to monitor conformational transitions with high temporal resolution and…
This paper reports the force spectroscopy analysis of a polymer that translocates from one side of a membrane to the other side through an extended pore, pulled by a cantilever that moves with constant velocity against the damping and the…
Thermal unfolding of proteins is compared to folding and mechanical stretching in a simple topology-based dynamical model. We define the unfolding time and demonstrate its low-temperature divergence. Below a characteristic temperature,…