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4,800
The Inter-Strand Modes of the DNA as a Probe into MW-Radiation
q-bio.BM
We consider the regime in which the bands of the torsional acoustic (TA) and the hydrogen-bond-stretch (HBS) modes of the DNA interpenetrate each other. Within the framework of a model that accommodates the structure of the double helix, we find the three-wave interaction between the TA- and the HBS-modes, and show tha...
biology
4,801
Differential hydrophobicity drives self-assembly in Huntington's disease
q-bio.BM
Identifying the driving forces and the mechanism of association of huntingtin-exon1, a close marker for the progress of Huntington's disease, is an important prerequisite towards finding potential drug targets, and ultimately a cure. We introduce here a modelling framework based on a key analogy of the physico-chemical...
biology
4,802
Hydration Water Dynamics and Instigation of Protein Structural Relaxation
q-bio.BM
The molecular mechanism of the solvent motion that is required to instigate the protein structural relaxation above a critical hydration level or transition temperature has yet to be determined. In this work we use quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS) and molecular dynamics simulation to investigate hydration water ...
biology
4,803
Thermal denaturation and folding rates of single domain proteins: size matters
q-bio.BM
We analyze the dependence of thermal denaturation transition and folding rates of globular proteins on the number of amino acid residues, N. Using lattice Go models we show that DeltaT/T_F ~ N^-1, where T_F is the folding transition temperature and DeltaT is the folding transition width. This finding is consistent with...
biology
4,804
Asymmetry in the shapes of folded and denatured states of proteins
q-bio.BM
The asymmetry in the shapes of folded and unfolded states are probed using two parameters, one being a measure of the sphericity and the other that describes the shape. For the folded states, whose interiors are densely packed, the radii of gyration (Rg) and these two parameters are calculated using the coordinates of ...
biology
4,805
Protein secondary structure prediction by combining hidden Markov models and sliding window scores
q-bio.BM
Instead of conformation states of single residues, refined conformation states of quintuplets are proposed to reflect conformation correlation. Simple hidden Markov models combining with sliding window scores are used for predicting secondary structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence. Since the length of prot...
biology
4,806
Protein secondary structure: Entropy, correlations and prediction
q-bio.BM
Is protein secondary structure primarily determined by local interactions between residues closely spaced along the amino acid backbone, or by non-local tertiary interactions? To answer this question we have measured the entropy densities of primary structure and secondary structure sequences, and the local inter-seque...
biology
4,807
Complex folding pathways in a simple beta-hairpin
q-bio.BM
The determination of the folding mechanisms of proteins is critical to understand the topological change that can propagate Alzheimer and Creutzfeld-Jakobs diseases, among others. The computational community has paid considerable attention to this problem; however, the associated time scale, typically on the order of m...
biology
4,808
Analytic models for mechanotransduction: gating a mechanosensitive channel
q-bio.BM
Analytic estimates for the forces and free energy generated by bilayer deformation reveal a compelling and intuitive model for MscL channel gating analogous to the nucleation of a second phase. We argue that the competition between hydrophobic mismatch and tension results in a surprisingly rich story which can provide ...
biology
4,809
Are residues in a protein folding nucleus evolutionarily conserved?
q-bio.BM
It is important to understand how protein folding and evolution influences each other. Several studies based on entropy calculation correlating experimental measurement of residue participation in folding nucleus and sequence conservation have reached different conclusions. Here we report analysis of conservation of fo...
biology
4,810
Coarse-Grained Model of Entropic Allostery
q-bio.BM
Many signalling functions in molecular biology require proteins bind to substrates such as DNA in response to environmental signals such as the simultaneous binding to a small molecule. Examples are repressor proteins which may transmit information via a conformational change in response to the ligand binding. An alter...
biology
4,811
Localization of DNA damage by current exchanging repair enzymes: effects of cooperativity on detection time
q-bio.BM
How DNA repair enzymes find the relatively rare sites of damage is not known in great detail. Recent experiments and molecular data suggest that the individual repair enzymes do not work independently of each other, but rather interact with each other through currents exchanged along DNA. A damaged site in DNA hinders ...
biology
4,812
DNA Renaturation at the Water-Phenol Interface
q-bio.BM
We study DNA adsorption and renaturation in a water-phenol two-phase system, with or without shaking. In very dilute solutions, single-stranded DNA is adsorbed at the interface in a salt-dependent manner. At high salt concentrations the adsorption is irreversible. The adsorption of the single-stranded DNA is specific t...
biology
4,813
Correlation between sequence hydrophobicity and surface-exposure pattern of database proteins
q-bio.BM
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 analyzing the known protein structures, we quantify the degree to which the hydrophob...
biology
4,814
Modeling DNA Conformational Transformations on the Mesoscopic Scales
q-bio.BM
The approach for the description of the DNA conformational transformations on the mesoscopic scales in the frame of the double helix is presented. Due to consideration of the joint motions of DNA structural elements along the conformational pathways the models for different transformations may be constructed in the uni...
biology
4,815
Ionic effect on combing of single DNA molecules and observation of their force-induced melting by fluorescence microscopy
q-bio.BM
Molecular combing is a powerful and simple method for aligning DNA molecules onto a surface. Using this technique combined with fluorescence microscopy, we observed that the length of lambda-DNA molecules was extended to about 1.6 times their contour length (unextended length, 16.2 micrometers) by the combing method on...
biology
4,816
Brownian Dynamics Simulation of Nucleosome Formation and Disruption under Stretching
q-bio.BM
Using a Brownian dynamics simulation, we numerically studied the interaction of DNA with histone and proposed an octamer-rotation model to describe the process of nucleosome formation. Nucleosome disruption under stretching was also simulated. The theoretical curves of extension versus time as well as of force versus e...
biology
4,817
A model for processivity of molecular motors
q-bio.BM
We propose a two-dimensional model for a complete description of the dynamics of molecular motors, including both the processive movement along track filaments and the dissociation from the filaments. The theoretical results on the distributions of the run length and dwell time at a given ATP concentration, the depende...
biology
4,818
Mechanism of unidirectional movement of kinesin motors
q-bio.BM
Kinesin motors have been studied extensively both experimentally and theoretically. However, the microscopic mechanism of the processive movement of kinesin is still an open question. In this paper, we propose a hand-over-hand model for the processivity of kinesin, which is based on chemical, mechanical, and electrical...
biology
4,819
Model for processive movement of myosin V and myosin VI
q-bio.BM
Myosin V and myosin VI are two classes of two-headed molecular motors of the myosin superfamily that move processively along helical actin filaments in opposite directions. Here we present a hand-over-hand model for their processive movements. In the model, the moving direction of a dimeric molecular motor is automatic...
biology
4,820
Speed-Up of DNA Melting Algorithm with Complete Nearest Neighbor Properties
q-bio.BM
We describe a faster and more accurate algorithm for computing the statistical mechanics of DNA denaturation according to the Poland-Scheraga type. Nearest neighbor thermodynamics is included in a complete and general way. The algorithm represents an optimization with respect to algorithmic complexity of the partition ...
biology
4,821
Temperature Dependent Conformational Transitions and Hydrogen Bond Dynamics of the Elastin-Like Octapeptide GVG(VPGVG): a Molecular Dynamics Study
q-bio.BM
A joint experimental / theoretical investigation of the elastin-like octapeptide GVG(VPGVG) was carried out. In this paper a comprehensive molecular dynamics study of the temperature dependent folding and unfolding of the octapeptide is presented. The current study, as well as its experimental counterpart find that thi...
biology
4,822
Helix-coil Transition in Closed Circular DNA
q-bio.BM
A simplified model for the closed circular DNA (ccDNA) is proposed to describe some specific features of the helix-coil transition in such molecule. The Hamiltonian of ccDNA is related to the one introduced earlier for the linear DNA. The basic assumption is that the reduced energy of the hydrogen bond is not constant ...
biology
4,823
Realistic protein-protein association rates from a simple diffusional model neglecting long-range interactions, free energy barriers, and landscape ruggedness
q-bio.BM
We develop a simple but rigorous model of protein-protein association kinetics based on diffusional association on free energy landscapes obtained by sampling configurations within and surrounding the native complex binding funnels. Guided by results obtained on exactly solvable model problems, we transform the problem...
biology
4,824
Stability and the Evolvability of Function in a Model Protein
q-bio.BM
Functional proteins must fold with some minimal stability to a structure that can perform a biochemical task. Here we use a simple model to investigate the relationship between the stability requirement and the capacity of a protein to evolve the function of binding to a ligand. Although our model contains no built-in ...
biology
4,825
Dynamics of heterodimeric kinesins and cooperation of kinesins
q-bio.BM
Using the model for the processive movement of a dimeric kinesin we proposed before, we study the dynamics of a number of mutant homodimeric and heterodimeric kinesins that were constructed by Kaseda et al. (Kaseda, K., Higuchi, H. and Hirose, K. PNAS 99, 16058 (2002)). The theoretical results of ATPase rate per head, ...
biology
4,826
Can contact potentials reliably predict stability of proteins?
q-bio.BM
The simplest approximation of interaction potential between amino-acids in proteins is the contact potential, which defines the effective free energy of a protein conformation by a set of amino acid contacts formed in this conformation. Finding a contact potential capable of predicting free energies of protein states a...
biology
4,827
Vibrational energy relaxation (VER) of a CD stretching mode in cytochrome c
q-bio.BM
We first review how to determine the rate of vibrational energy relaxation (VER) using perturbation theory. We then apply those theoretical results to the problem of VER of a CD stretching mode in the protein cytochrome c. We model cytochrome c in vacuum as a normal mode system with the lowest-order anharmonic coupling...
biology
4,828
Searching low-energy conformations of two elastin sequences
q-bio.BM
The three-dimensional structures of two common repeat motifs Val$^1$-Pro$^2$-Gly$^3$-Val$^4$-Gly$^5$ and Val$^1$-Gly$^2$-Val$^3$-Pro$^4$-Gly$^5$-Val$^6$-Gly$^7$-Val$^8$-Pro$^9$ of tropoelastin are investigated by using the multicanonical simulation procedure. By minimizing the energy structures along the trajectory the...
biology
4,829
Lever-arm and Washboard-potential theories jointly account for Myosin II dynamics
q-bio.BM
We address the controversial hot question concerning the validity of the loose-coupling versus the lever-arm models in the actomyosin dynamics by re-interpreting and extending the washboard potential model proposed by some of us in a previous paper. In the new theory, a loose-coupling mechanism co-exists with the deter...
biology
4,830
Importance of chirality and reduced flexibility of protein side chains: A study with square and tetrahedral lattice models
q-bio.BM
In simple models side chains are often represented implicitly (e.g., by spin-states) or simplified as one atom. We study side chain effects using square lattice and tetrahedral lattice models, with explicitly side chains of two atoms. We distinguish effects due to chirality and effects due to side chain flexibilities, ...
biology
4,831
Reconstruction of protein structures from a vectorial representation
q-bio.BM
We show that the contact map of the native structure of globular proteins can be reconstructed starting from the sole knowledge of the contact map's principal eigenvector, and present an exact algorithm for this purpose. Our algorithm yields a unique contact map for all 221 globular structures of PDBselect25 of length ...
biology
4,832
Proteins associated with diseases show enhanced sequence correlation between charged residues
q-bio.BM
Function of proteins or a network of interacting proteins often involves communication between residues that are well separated in sequence. The classic example is the participation of distant residues in allosteric regulation. Bioinformatic and structural analysis methods have been introduced to infer residues that ar...
biology
4,833
Topological thermal instability and length of proteins
q-bio.BM
We present an analysis of the effects of global topology on the structural stability of folded proteins in thermal equilibrium with a heat bath. For a large class of single domain proteins, we computed the harmonic spectrum within the Gaussian Network Model (GNM) and determined the spectral dimension, a parameter descr...
biology
4,834
Geometry and symmetry presculpt the free-energy landscape of proteins
q-bio.BM
We present a simple physical model which demonstrates that the native state folds of proteins can emerge on the basis of considerations of geometry and symmetry. We show that the inherent anisotropy of a chain molecule, the geometrical and energetic constraints placed by the hydrogen bonds and sterics, and hydrophobici...
biology
4,835
The principal eigenvector of contact matrices and hydrophobicity profiles in proteins
q-bio.BM
With the aim to study the relationship between protein sequences and their native structures, we adopt vectorial representations for both sequence and structure. The structural representation is based on the Principal Eigenvector of the fold's contact matrix (PE). As recently shown, the latter encodes sufficient inform...
biology
4,836
Untangling influences of hydrophobicity on protein sequences and structures
q-bio.BM
We fit the Fourier transforms of solvent accessibility and hydrophobicity profiles of a representative set of proteins to a joint multi-variable Gaussian. This allows us to separate the intrinsic tendencies of sequence and structure profiles from the interactions that correlate them; for example, the $\alpha$-helix per...
biology
4,837
Membrane-protein interactions in mechanosensitive channels
q-bio.BM
In this paper, we examine the mechanical role of the lipid bilayer in ion channel conformation and function with specific reference to the case of the mechanosensitive channel of large conductance (MscL). In a recent paper (Wiggins and Phillips, 2004), we argued that mechanotransduction very naturally arises from lipid...
biology
4,838
Forces During Bacteriophage DNA Packaging and Ejection
q-bio.BM
The conjunction of insights from structural biology, solution biochemistry, genetics and single molecule biophysics has provided a renewed impetus for the construction of quantitative models of biological processes. One area that has been a beneficiary of these experimental techniques is the study of viruses. In this p...
biology
4,839
Thermodynamics of beta-amyloid fibril formation
q-bio.BM
Amyloid fibers are aggregates of proteins. They are built out of a peptide called $\beta$--amyloid (A$\beta$) containing between 41 and 43 residues, produced by the action of an enzyme which cleaves a much larger protein known as the Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP). X-ray diffraction experiments have shown that these f...
biology
4,840
Deriving amino acid contact potentials from their frequencies of occurence in proteins: a lattice model study
q-bio.BM
The possibility of deriving the contact potentials between amino acids from their frequencies of occurence in proteins is discussed in evolutionary terms. This approach allows the use of traditional thermodynamics to describe such frequencies and, consequently, to develop a strategy to include in the calculations corre...
biology
4,841
Simple models of protein folding and of non--conventional drug design
q-bio.BM
While all the information required for the folding of a protein is contained in its amino acid sequence, one has not yet learned how to extract this information to predict the three--dimensional, biologically active, native conformation of a protein whose sequence is known. Using insight obtained from simple model simu...
biology
4,842
Amino acid substitution matrices for protein conformation identification
q-bio.BM
Methods for alignment of protein sequences typically measure similarity by using substitution matrix with scores for all possible exchanges of one amino acid with another. Although widely used, the matrices derived from homologous sequence segments, such as Dayhoff's PAM matrices and Henikoff's BLOSUM matrices, are not...
biology
4,843
A Constructive Approach to Gene Expression Dynamics
q-bio.BM
The advent of new experimental genomic technologies and the massive increase of DNA sequence information is helping researchers better understand how our genes work. Recently, experiments on mRNA abundance (gene expression) have revealed that gene expression shows a stationary organization described by a power-law dist...
biology
4,844
The effects of non-native interactions on protein folding rates: Theory and simulation
q-bio.BM
Proteins are minimally frustrated polymers. However, for realistic protein models non-native interactions must be taken into account. In this paper we analyze the effect of non-native interactions on the folding rate and on the folding free energy barrier. We present an analytic theory to account for the modification o...
biology
4,845
Potential function of simplified protein models for discriminating native proteins from decoys: Combining contact interaction and local sequence-dependent geometry
q-bio.BM
An effective potential function is critical for protein structure prediction and folding simulation. For simplified models of proteins where coordinates of only $C_\alpha$ atoms need to be specified, an accurate potential function is important. Such a simplified model is essential for efficient search of conformational...
biology
4,846
Order independent structural alignment of circularly permuted proteins
q-bio.BM
Circular permutation connects the N and C termini of a protein and concurrently cleaves elsewhere in the chain, providing an important mechanism for generating novel protein fold and functions. However, their in genomes is unknown because current detection methods can miss many occurances, mistaking random repeats as c...
biology
4,847
Developing optimal nonlinear scoring function for protein design
q-bio.BM
Motivation. Protein design aims to identify sequences compatible with a given protein fold but incompatible to any alternative folds. To select the correct sequences and to guide the search process, a design scoring function is critically important. Such a scoring function should be able to characterize the global fitn...
biology
4,848
Design of a folding inhibitor of the HIV-1 Protease
q-bio.BM
Being HIV-1-PR an essential enzyme in the viral life cycle, its inhibition can control AIDS. Because the folding of single domain proteins, like HIV-1-PR is controlled by local elementary structures (LES, folding units stabilized by strongly interacting, highly conserved amino acids) which have evolved over myriads of ...
biology
4,849
Probing vibrational energy relaxation in proteins using normal modes
q-bio.BM
Vibrational energy relaxation (VER) of a selected mode in cytochrome c (hemeprotein) in vacuum is studied using two theoretical approaches: One is the equilibrium simulation approach with quantum correction factors, and the other is the reduced model approach which describes the protein as an ensemble of normal modes c...
biology
4,850
Oligomerization of amyloid Abeta peptides using hydrogen bonds and hydrophobicity forces
q-bio.BM
The 16-22 amino acid fragment of the beta-amyloid peptide associated with the Alzheimer's disease, Abeta, is capable of forming amyloid fibrils. Here we study the aggregation mechanism of Abeta(16-22) peptides by unbiased thermodynamic simulations at the atomic level for systems of one, three and six Abeta(16-22) pepti...
biology
4,851
Latent periodicity of serine-threonine and tyrosine protein kinases and another protein families
q-bio.BM
We identified latent periodicity in catalytic domains of approximately 85% of serine/threonine and tyrosine protein kinases. Similar results were obtained for other 22 protein domains. We also designed the method of noise decomposition, which is aimed to distinguish between different periodicity types of the same perio...
biology
4,852
Enzyme as a thermal resonance pump
q-bio.BM
We found latent periodicity of 150 protein families now. We suppose that latent periodicity can determine a spectrum of resonance oscillations in proteins.
biology
4,853
Hidden symmetries in primary sequences of small alpha proteins
q-bio.BM
Proteins have regular tertiary structures but irregular amino acid sequences. This made it very difficult to decode the structural information in the protein sequences. Here we demonstrate that many small alpha protein domains have hidden sequence symmetries characteristic of their pseudo-symmetric tertiary structures....
biology
4,854
FSSP to SCOP and CATH (F2CS) Prediction Server
q-bio.BM
Summary: The F2CS server provides access to the software, F2CS2.00, that implements an automated prediction method of SCOP and CATH classifications of proteins, based on their FSSP Z-scores (Getz et al., 2002), Availability: Free, at http://www.weizmann.ac.il/physics/complex/compphys/f2cs/. Contact: eytan.domany@weizma...
biology
4,855
A model for the accidental catalysis of protein unfolding in vivo
q-bio.BM
Activated processes such as protein unfolding are highly sensitive to heterogeneity in the environment. We study a highly simplified model of a protein in a random heterogeneous environment, a model of the in vivo environment. It is found that if the heterogeneity is sufficiently large the total rate of the process is ...
biology
4,856
Water and molecular chaperones act as weak links of protein folding networks: energy landscape and punctuated equilibrium changes point towards a game theory of proteins
q-bio.BM
Water molecules and molecular chaperones efficiently help the protein folding process. Here we describe their action in the context of the energy and topological networks of proteins. In energy terms water and chaperones were suggested to decrease the activation energy between various local energy minima smoothing the ...
biology
4,857
Molecular Dynamics Simulations of a Nucleosome and Free DNA
q-bio.BM
Nucleosomes organize the folding of DNA into chromatin and significantly influence transcription, replication, regulation and repair. All atom molecular dynamics simulations of a nucleosome and of its 146 basepairs of DNA free in solution have been conducted. DNA helical parameters are extracted from each trajectory to...
biology
4,858
Specific and non specific hybridization of oligonucleotide probes on microarrays
q-bio.BM
Gene expression analysis by means of microarrays is based on the sequence specific binding of mRNA to DNA oligonucleotide probes and its measurement using fluorescent labels. The binding of RNA fragments involving other sequences than the intended target is problematic because it adds a "chemical background" to the sig...
biology
4,859
Folding is Not Required for Bilayer Insertion: Replica Exchange Simulations of an a-Helical Peptide with an Explicit Lipid Bilayer
q-bio.BM
We implement the replica exchange molecular dynamics algorithm to study the interactions of a model peptide (WALP-16) with an explicitly represented DPPC membrane bilayer. We observe the spontaneous, unbiased insertion of WALP-16 into the DPPC bilayer and its folding into an a-helix with a trans-bilayer orientation. We...
biology
4,860
Adsorption models of hybridization and post-hybridisation behaviour on oligonucleotide microarrays
q-bio.BM
Analysis of data from an Affymetrix Latin Square spike-in experiment indicates that measured fluorescence intensities of features on an oligonucleotide microarray are related to spike-in RNA target concentrations via a hyperbolic response function, generally identified as a Langmuir adsorption isotherm. Furthermore the...
biology
4,861
Model for processive movement of dynein
q-bio.BM
A model for the processive movement of dynein is presented based on experimental observations available. In the model, the change from strong microtubule-binding to weak binding of dynein is determined naturally by the variation of the relative orientation between the two interacting surfaces of the stalk tip and the m...
biology
4,862
A Phenomenological model of Myosin II dynamics in the presence of external loads
q-bio.BM
We address the controversial hot question concerning the validity of the loose coupling versus the lever-arm theories in the actomyosin dynamics by re-interpreting and extending the phenomenological washboard potential model proposed by some of us in a previous paper. In this new model a Brownian motion harnessing ther...
biology
4,863
Native geometry and the dynamics of protein folding
q-bio.BM
In this paper we investigate the role of native geometry on the kinetics of protein folding based on simple lattice models and Monte Carlo simulations. Results obtained within the scope of the Miyazawa-Jernigan indicate the existence of two dynamical folding regimes depending on the protein chain length. For chains lar...
biology
4,864
The Go model revisited: Native structure and the geometric coupling between local and long-range contacts
q-bio.BM
Monte Carlo simulations show that long-range interactions play a major role in determining the folding rates of 48-mer three-dimensional lattice polymers modelled by the Go potential. For three target structures with different native geometries we found a sharp increase in the folding time when the relative contributio...
biology
4,865
Folding thermodynamics of peptides
q-bio.BM
A simplified interaction potential for protein folding studies at the atomic level is discussed and tested on a set of peptides with about 20 residues each. The test set contains both alpha-helical (Trp cage, Fs) and beta-sheet (GB1p, GB1m2, GB1m3, Betanova, LLM) peptides. The model, which is entirely sequence-based, i...
biology
4,866
Surfaces and orientations: much to fret about?
q-bio.BM
Single molecule FRET (fluorescence resonance energy transfer) is a powerful technique for detecting real-time conformational changes and molecular interactions during biological reactions. In this review, we examine different techniques of extending observation times via immobilization and illustrate how useful biologi...
biology
4,867
Correlations in Systems of Complex Directed Macromolecules
q-bio.BM
An ensemble of directed macromolecules on a lattice is considered, where the constituting molecules are chosen as a random sequence of N different types. The same type of molecules experiences a hard-core (exclusion) interaction. We study the robustness of the macromolecules with respect to breaking and substituting in...
biology
4,868
Ion-Phosphate Mode in the DNA Low-Frequency Spectra
q-bio.BM
The vibrational dynamics of a DNA molecule with counterions neutralizing the charged phosphate groups have been studied. With the help of elaborated model the conformational vibrations of the DNA double helix with alkaline metal ions have been described both qualitatively and quantitatively. For the complexes of DNA wi...
biology
4,869
Conformational transformations of DNA macromolecule in heteronomous conformation
q-bio.BM
To understand the mechanism of TATA-box conformational transformations we model structure mobility and find the types of conformational excitations of DNA macromolecule in heteronomous conformation. We have constructed the two-component model for describing DNA conformational transformation with simultaneous transition...
biology
4,870
Global optimization of proteins using a dynamical lattice model: Ground states and energy landscapes
q-bio.BM
A simple approach is proposed to investigate the protein structure. Using a low complexity model, a simple pairwise interaction and the concept of global optimization, we are able to calculate ground states of proteins, which are in agreement with experimental data. All possible model structures of small proteins are a...
biology
4,871
DNA condensation and redissolution: Interaction between overcharged DNA molecules
q-bio.BM
The effective DNA-DNA interaction force is calculated by computer simulations with explicit tetravalent counterions and monovalent salt. For overcharged DNA molecules, the interaction force shows a double-minimum structure. The positions and depths of these minima are regulated by the counterion density in the bulk. Us...
biology
4,872
A protein structural alphabet and its substitution matrix CLESUM
q-bio.BM
By using a mixture model for the density distribution of the three pseudobond angles formed by $C_\alpha$ atoms of four consecutive residues, the local structural states are discretized as 17 conformational letters of a protein structural alphabet. This coarse-graining procedure converts a 3D structure to a 1D code seq...
biology
4,873
Vibrational energy relaxation in proteins
q-bio.BM
An overview of theories related to vibrational energy relaxation (VER) in proteins is presented. VER of a selected mode in cytochrome c is studied using two theoretical approaches. One is the equilibrium simulation approach with quantum correction factors, and the other is the reduced model approach which describes the...
biology
4,874
Recoverable One-dimensional Encoding of Three-dimensional Protein Structures
q-bio.BM
Protein one-dimensional (1D) structures such as secondary structure and contact number provide intuitive pictures to understand how the native three-dimensional (3D) structure of a protein is encoded in the amino acid sequence. However, it has not been clear whether a given set of 1D structures contains sufficient info...
biology
4,875
Base pair interactions and hybridization isotherms of matched and mismatched oligonucleotide probes on microarrays
q-bio.BM
The lack of specificity in microarray experiments due to non-specific hybridization raises a serious problem for the analysis of microarray data because the residual chemical background intensity is not related to the expression degree of the gene of interest. We analyzed the concentration dependence of the signal inte...
biology
4,876
Predicting Residue-wise Contact Orders of Native Protein Structure from Amino Acid Sequence
q-bio.BM
Residue-wise contact order (RWCO) is a new kind of one-dimensional protein structures which represents the extent of long-range contacts. We have recently shown that a set of three types of one-dimensional structures (secondary structure, contact number, and RWCO) contains sufficient information for reconstructing the ...
biology
4,877
Heisenberg uncertainty principle for thermal response of the microtubules excited by ultra-short laser pulses
q-bio.BM
In this paper the heat signaling in microtubules (MT) is investigated. It is argued that for the description of the heat signaling phenomena in MT, the hyperbolic heat transport (HHT) equation must be used. It is shown that HHT is the Klein-Gordon (K-G) equation. The general solution for the K-G equation for MT is obta...
biology
4,878
A stochastic approach to multi-gene expression dynamics
q-bio.BM
In the last years, tens of thousands gene expression profiles for cells of several organisms have been monitored. Gene expression is a complex transcriptional process where mRNA molecules are translated into proteins, which control most of the cell functions. In this process, the correlation among genes is crucial to d...
biology
4,879
Early events in insulin fibrillization studied by time-lapse atomic force microscopy
q-bio.BM
The importance of understanding the mechanism of protein aggregation into insoluble amyloid fibrils relies not only on its medical consequences, but also on its more basic properties of self--organization. The discovery that a large number of uncorrelated proteins can form, under proper conditions, structurally similar...
biology
4,880
Helices in Biomolecules
q-bio.BM
Identical objects, regularly assembled, form a helix, which is the principal motif of nucleic acids, proteins, and viral capsids.
biology
4,881
Symmetry and Dynamics in living organisms: The self-similarity principle governs gene expression dynamics
q-bio.BM
The ambitious and ultimate research purpose in Systems Biology is the understanding and modelling of the cell's system. Although a vast number of models have been developed in order to extract biological knowledge from complex systems composed of basic elements as proteins, genes and chemical compounds, a need remains ...
biology
4,882
Universal collective fluctuations in gene expression dynamics from yeast to human
q-bio.BM
In this work, the dynamics of fluctuations in gene expression time series is investigated. By using collected data of gene expression from yeast and human organisms, we found that the fluctuations of gene expression level and its average value over time are strongly correlated and obey a scaling law. As this feature is...
biology
4,883
Controlled DNA compaction within chromatin: the tail-bridging effect
q-bio.BM
We study the mechanism underlying the attraction between nucleosomes, the fundamental packaging units of DNA inside the chromatin complex. We introduce a simple model of the nucleosome, the eight-tail colloid, consisting of a charged sphere with eight oppositely charged, flexible, grafted chains that represent the term...
biology
4,884
Study the effects of metallic ions on the combination of DNA and histones with molecular combing technique
q-bio.BM
The effects of monovalent (Na+, K+) and divalent (Mg2+, Ca2+, Mn2+) ions on the interaction between DNA and histone are studied using the molecular combing technique. Lamda-DNA molecules and DNA-histone complexes incubated with metal cations (Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Mn2+) are stretched on hydrophobic surfaces, and directl...
biology
4,885
Functional Dynamics of PDZ Binding Domains: A Normal Mode Analysis
q-bio.BM
PDZ (Post-synaptic density-95/discs large/zonula occludens-1) domains are relatively small (80 to 120 residues) protein binding modules central in the organization of receptor clusters and in the association of cellular proteins. Their main function is to bind C-terminals of selected proteins that are recognized throug...
biology
4,886
Quantifying Influenza Vaccine Efficacy and Antigenic Distance
q-bio.BM
We introduce a new measure of antigenic distance between influenza A vaccine and circulating strains. The measure correlates well with efficacies of the H3N2 influenza A component of the annual vaccine between 1971 and 2004, as do results of a theory of the immune response to influenza following vaccination. This new m...
biology
4,887
Predicting Secondary Structures, Contact Numbers, and Residue-wise Contact Orders of Native Protein Structure from Amino Acid Sequence by Critical Random Networks
q-bio.BM
Prediction of one-dimensional protein structures such as secondary structures and contact numbers is useful for the three-dimensional structure prediction and important for the understanding of sequence-structure relationship. Here we present a new machine-learning method, critical random networks (CRNs), for predictin...
biology
4,888
Study of a model for the folding of a small protein
q-bio.BM
We describe the results obtained from an improved model for protein folding. We find that a good agreement with the native structure of a 46 residue long, five-letter protein segment is obtained by carefully tuning the parameters of the self-avoiding energy. In particular we find an improved free-energy profile. We als...
biology
4,889
Elastic properties of grafted microtubules
q-bio.BM
We use single-particle tracking to study the elastic properties of single microtubules grafted to a substrate. Thermal fluctuations of the free microtubule's end are recorded, in order to measure position distribution functions from which we calculate the persistence length of microtubules with contour lengths between ...
biology
4,890
Free energy adopted stochastic optimization protein folding
q-bio.BM
Optimal structure of proteins is described by linear stochastic differential equation with mean decrease of free energy and volatility. Structure determining strategy is given by a twin of stochastic variables for which empirical conditions are not postulated. Optimal structure determination will be deformed to be adop...
biology
4,891
Design of HIV-1-PR inhibitors which do not create resistance: blocking the folding of single monomers
q-bio.BM
One of the main problems of drug design is that of optimizing the drug--target interaction. In the case in which the target is a viral protein displaying a high mutation rate, a second problem arises, namely the eventual development of resistance. We wish to suggest a scheme for the design of non--conventional drugs wh...
biology
4,892
Geometric and physical considerations for realistic protein models
q-bio.BM
Protein structure is generally conceptualized as the global arrangement or of smaller, local motifs of helices, sheets, and loops. These regular, recurring secondary structural elements have well-understood and standardized definitions in terms of amino acid backbone geometry and the manner in which hydrogen bonding re...
biology
4,893
Structure calculation strategies for helical membrane proteins; a comparison study
q-bio.BM
Structure predictions of helical membrane proteins have been designed to take advantage of the structural autonomy of secondary structure elements, as postulated by the two-stage model of Engelman and Popot. In this context, we investigate structure calculation strategies for two membrane proteins with different functi...
biology
4,894
Inferring interactions from combinatorial protein libraries
q-bio.BM
Proteins created by combinatorial methods in vitro are an important source of information for understanding sequence-structure-function relationships. Alignments of folded proteins from combinatorial libraries can be analyzed using methods developed for naturally occurring proteins, but this neglects the information co...
biology
4,895
Design of amino acid sequences to fold into C_alpha-model proteins
q-bio.BM
In order to extend the results obtained with minimal lattice models to more realistic systems, we study a model where proteins are described as a chain of 20 kinds of structureless amino acids moving in a continuum space and interacting through a contact potential controlled by a 20x20 quenched random matrix. The goal ...
biology
4,896
Geometrical model for the native-state folds of proteins
q-bio.BM
We recently introduced a physical model [Hoang et al., P. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA (2004), Banavar et al., Phys. Rev. E (2004)] for proteins which incorporates, in an approximate manner, several key features such as the inherent anisotropy of a chain molecule, the geometrical and energetic constraints placed by the hydroge...
biology
4,897
The histone octamer influences the wrapping direction of DNA on it: Brownian dynamics simulation of the nucleosome chirality
q-bio.BM
In eukaryote nucleosome, DNA wraps around a histone octamer in a left-handed way. We study the process of chirality formation of nucleosome with Brownian dynamics simulation. We model the histone octamer with a quantitatively adjustable chirality: left-handed, right-handed or non-chiral, and simulate the dynamical wrap...
biology
4,898
Specificity of Trypsin and Chymotrypsin: Loop Motion Controlled Dynamic Correlation as a Determinant
q-bio.BM
Trypsin and chymotrypsin are both serine proteases with high sequence and structural similarities, but with different substrate specificity. Previous experiments have demonstrated the critical role of the two loops outside the binding pocket in controlling the specificity of the two enzymes. To understand the mechanism...
biology
4,899
Spatial dynamics of homochiralization
q-bio.BM
The emergence and spreading of chirality on the early Earth is considered by studying a set of reaction-diffusion equations based on a polymerization model. It is found that effective mixing of the early oceans is necessary to reach the present homochiral state. The possibility of introducing mass extinctions and modif...
biology