Structural and Energetic Heterogeneity in Protein Folding

A general theoretical framework is developed using free energy functional methods to understand the effects of heterogeneity in the folding of a well-designed protein. Native energetic heterogeneity arising from non-uniformity in native stability, as well as entropic heterogeneity intrinsic to the topology of the native structure are both investigated as to their impact on the folding free energy landscape and resulting folding mechanism. Given a minimally frustrated protein, both structural and energetic heterogeneity lower the thermodynamic barrier to folding, and designing in sufficient heterogeneity can eliminate the barrier at the folding transition temperature. Sequences with different distributions of stability throughout the protein and correspondingly different folding mechanisms may still be good folders to the same structure. This theoretical framework allows for a systematic study of the coupled effects of energetics and topology in protein folding, and provides interpretations and predictions for future experiments which may investigate these effects.

• Publication year

  2000

• Venue

  arXiv: Disordered Systems and Neural Networks

• Publication date

  2000-09-27

• Fields of study

  Biology, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry

• Identifiers
  arXiv cond-mat/0009412
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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