Deeper insights into protein folding
Thursday, June 26, 2014 - 10:30
in Physics & Chemistry
Investigating the structure and dynamics of so-called Meso-Bio-Nano (MBN) systems—micron-sized biological or nanotechnology entities—is a rapidly expanding field of science. Now, scientists Alexander Yakubovich and Andrey Solov'yov from MBN Research Centre in Frankfurt, Germany, have produced a new theoretical study of a protein macromolecule changing from a coil structural conformation to a globular one. Their statistic mechanics model, just published in the European Physical Journal D, describes the thermodynamic properties of real proteins in an aqueous environment, using a minimal number of free physical parameters.