Related papers: Folding thermodynamics of three beta-sheet peptide…
How do protein structure prediction models fold proteins? We investigate this question by tracing how ESMFold folds a beta hairpin, a prevalent structural motif. Through counterfactual interventions on model latents, we identify two…
Protein sequences serve as a natural record of the evolutionary constraints that shape their functional structures. We show that it is possible to use only sequence information to go beyond predicting native structures and global stability…
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…
Simplified Go models, where only native contacts interact favorably, have proven useful to characterize some aspects of the folding of small proteins. The success of these models is limited by the fact that all residues interact in the same…
Viroporins are small viral proteins that oligomerize in the membrane of host cells and induce the formation of hydrophilic pores in these membranes, thus altering the physiological properties of the host cells. Due to their significance for…
Protein amyloidosis is a cytopathological process characterized by the formation of highly beta-sheet-rich fibrils. How this process occurs and how to prevent/treat the associated diseases are not completely understood. Here, we carry out a…
We present results from extensive molecular dynamics simulations of collapse transitions of hydrophobic polymers in explicit water focused on understanding effects of lengthscale of the hydrophobic surface and of attractive interactions on…
The fundamental law for protein folding is the Thermodynamic Principle: the amino acid sequence of a protein determines its native structure and the native structure has the minimum Gibbs free energy. If all chemical problems can be…
We introduce a quantity, the entropic susceptibility, that measures the thermodynamic importance-for the folding transition-of the contacts between amino acids in model proteins. Using this quantity, we find that only one equilibrium run of…
We analyze the thermodynamic properties of a simplified model for folded RNA molecules recently studied by G. Vernizzi, H. Orland, A. Zee (in {\it Phys. Rev. Lett.} {\bf 94} (2005) 168103). The model consists of a chain of one-flavor base…
We introduce an effective tight-binding model to discuss penta-graphene and present an analytical solution. This model only involves the $\pi$-orbitals of the sp$^2$-hybridized carbon atoms and reproduces the two highest valence bands. By…
It is known that steric blocking by peptide sidechains of hydrogen bonding, HB, between water and peptide groups, PGs, in beta sheets accords with an amino acid intrinsic beta sheet preference. The present observations with Quantum…
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.…
Models of protein energetics which neglect interactions between amino acids that are not adjacent in the native state, such as the Go model, encode or underlie many influential ideas on protein folding. Implicit in this simplification is a…
Hydrophobicity is thought to be one of the primary forces driving the folding of proteins. On average, hydrophobic residues occur preferentially in the core, whereas polar residues tends to occur at the surface of a folded protein. By…
Peptide T is a synthetic octapeptide fragment, which corresponds to the region 185-192 of the gp120 HIV coat protein and functions as a viral entry inhibitor. In this work, a folding molecular dynamics simulation of peptide T in a…
A small model polypeptide represented in atomic detail is folded using Monte Carlo dynamics. The polypeptide is designed to have a native conformation similar to the central part of the helix-turn-helix protein ROP. Starting from a…
We study the thermodynamic behavior of a model protein with 54 amino acids that forms a three-helix bundle in its native state. The model contains three types of amino acids and five to six atoms per amino acid and has the Ramachandran…
We present a thermodynamically robust coarse-grained model to simulate folding of RNA in monovalent salt solutions. The model includes stacking, hydrogen bond and electrostatic interactions as fundamental components in describing the…
The use of micro-Raman spectroscopy, through chemical bond nano-scale probes, allows the changes in conformations (alpha helix -> beta sheet), chain orientation, disconnection of disulfide bonds (-20%) and the increase of intra and…