title: Thermodynamic stability of small-world oscillator networks: a case study of proteins.
abstract: We study vibrational thermodynamic stability of small-world oscillator networks by relating the average mean-square displacement S of oscillators to the eigenvalue spectrum of the Laplacian matrix of networks. We show that the cross-links suppress S effectively and there exist two phases on the small-world networks: (1) an unstable phase: when p1/N , S approximately N ; (2) a stable phase: when p1/N , S approximately p;{-1} , i.e., S/N approximately E_{cr};{-1} . Here, p is the parameter of small-world, N is the number of oscillators, and E_{cr}=pN is the number of cross-links. The results are exemplified by various real protein structures that follow the same scaling behavior S/N approximately E_{cr};{-1} of the stable phase. We also show that it is the "small-world" property that plays the key role in the thermodynamic stability and is responsible for the universal scaling S/N approximately E_{cr};{-1} , regardless of the model details.
authors.affiliation: NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, Singapore 117456, Republic of Singapore. renjie@nus.edu.sg
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.forename: Baowen
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D001683:Biological Clocks / Q000502:physiology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008954:Models, Biological; D008956:Models, Chemical; D011506:Proteins / Q000502:physiology*; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology*; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins