New Insights into Protein (Un)Folding Dynamics

Autor: Patrick Senet, Harold A. Scheraga, Yoann Cote, Gia G. Maisuradze, Patrice Delarue
Rok vydání: 2015
Předmět:
Zdroj: The journal of physical chemistry letters. 6(6)
ISSN: 1948-7185
Popis: A fundamental open problem in biophysics is how the folded structure of the main chain (MC) of a protein is determined by the physics of the interactions between the side-chains (SCs). All-atom molecular dynamics simulations of a model protein (Trp-cage) revealed that strong correlations between the motions of the SCs and the MC occur transiently at 380 K in unfolded segments of the protein, and during the simulations of the whole amino-acid sequence at 450 K. The high correlation between the SC and MC fluctuations is a fundamental property of the unfolded state and is also relevant to unstructured proteins as Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDPs), for which new reaction coordinates are introduced. The presented findings may open a new door as to how functions of IDPs are related to conformations, which play a crucial role in neurodegenerative diseases.
Databáze: OpenAIRE