Protein Ensembles: How Does Nature Harness Thermodynamic Fluctuations for Life? The Diverse Functional Roles of Conformational Ensembles in the Cell.

ABSTRACT: All soluble proteins populate conformational ensembles that together constitute the native state. Their fluctuations in water are intrinsic thermodynamic phenomena, and the distributions of the states on the energy landscape are determined by statistical thermodynamics; however, they are optimized to perform their biological functions. In this review we briefly describe advances in free energy landscape studies of protein conformational ensembles. Experimental (nuclear magnetic resonance, small-angle X-ray scattering, single-molecule spectroscopy, and cryo-electron microscopy) and computational (replica-exchange molecular dynamics, metadynamics, and Markov state models) approaches have made great progress in recent years. These address the challenging characterization of the highly flexibl

SUBMITTER: Wei G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6407618 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature