Levinthal's paradox.
- 1 January 1992
- journal article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Vol. 89 (1) , 20-22
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.89.1.20
Abstract
Levinthal's paradox is that finding the native folded state of a protein by a random search among all possible configurations can take an enormously long time. Yet proteins can fold in seconds or less. Mathematical analysis of a simple model shows that a small and physically reasonable energy bias against locally unfavorable configurations, of the order of a few kT, can reduce Levinthal's time to a biologically significant size.Keywords
This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit:
- Metastability of the folded states of globular proteins.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1990
- Monte Carlo simulations of the folding of beta-barrel globular proteins.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1988