Energetic Components of Cooperative Protein Folding

Abstract
A new lattice protein model with a four-helix bundle ground state is analyzed by a parameter-space Monte Carlo histogram technique to evaluate the effects of an extensive variety of model potentials on folding thermodynamics. Cooperative helical formation and contact energies based on a 5-letter alphabet are found to be insufficient to satisfy calorimetric and other experimental criteria for two-state folding. Such proteinlike behaviors are predicted, however, by models with polypeptidelike local conformational restrictions and environment-dependent hydrogen-bondinglike interactions.
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