Protein dynamics and function: insights from the energy landscape and solvent slaving.
Protein motions are complex and a good way to describe them is in terms of a very high-dimensional conformation space. We give here a simple explanation of the conformation space and the energy landscape, the conformational motions and protein reactions, based on an analogy to a traffic problem. The analogy provides insight into the slaving of protein processes to bulk solvent fluctuations, in both the native and unfolded states.
Frauenfelder
Hans
H
Theory Division, K710, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA. frauenfelder@lanl.gov
Fenimore
Paul W
PW
Young
Robert D
RD
D008958:Models, Molecular; D011487:Protein Conformation; D017510:Protein Folding; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D012997:Solvents / Q000737:chemistry*
D011506:Proteins; D012997:Solvents