title: alpha-helix formation: discontinuous molecular dynamics on an intermediate-resolution protein model.
abstract: An intermediate-resolution model of small, homogeneous peptides is introduced, and discontinuous molecular dynamics simulation is applied to study secondary structure formation. Physically, each model residue consists of a detailed three-bead backbone and a simplified single-bead side-chain. Excluded volume and hydrogen bond interactions are constructed with discontinuous (i.e., hard-sphere and square-well) potentials. Simulation results show that the backbone motion of the model is limited to realistic regions of Phi-Psi conformational space. Model polyalanine chains undergo a locally cooperative transition to form alpha-helices that are stabilized by backbone hydrogen bonding, while model polyglycine chains tend to adopt nonhelical structures. When side-chain size is increased beyond a critical diameter, steric interactions prevent formation of long alpha-helices. These trends in helicity as a function of residue type have been well documented by experimental, theoretical, and simulation studies and demonstrate the ability of the intermediate-resolution model developed in this work to accurately mimic realistic peptide behavior. The efficient algorithm used permits observation of the complete helix-coil transition within 15 min on a single-processor workstation, suggesting that simulations of very long times are possible with this model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-7905, USA.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Voegler Smith
authors.forename: C K
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Hall
mesh_terms: D000409:Alanine / Q000737:chemistry; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004734:Energy Metabolism; D006860:Hydrogen Bonding; D008958:Models, Molecular; D010455:Peptides / Q000737:chemistry*; D017510:Protein Folding; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: D010455:Peptides; C019529:polyalanine; C011080:polyglycine; D000409:Alanine