title: Where soft matter meets living matter--protein structure, stability, and folding in the cell.
abstract: A protein is a biopolymer that self-assembles through the process of protein folding. A cell is a crowded space where the surrounding macromolecules of a protein can limit the number of ways of folding. These crowding macromolecules can also affect the shape and the size of a physically malleable, or 'soft, squishy', protein with regulatory purposes. In this review, we focus on the in silico approaches of coarse-grained molecular simulations that enable the investigation of protein folding in a cell-like environment. When these simulation results were compared with experimentally measured properties of a protein, such joint effort has yielded new ideas on the specific function of a protein in cells. We also highlighted the recent developments of computer modeling and simulations that encompass the importance of the shape of a macromolecule, the interactions between macromolecules, and the hydrodynamic interactions on the kinetics and thermodynamics of a protein in a high concentration of protein solution and in cytoplasmic environments.
authors.affiliation: University of Houston, TX, USA. mscheung@uh.edu
authors.forename: Margaret S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Cheung
mesh_terms: D008958:Models, Molecular; D011485:Protein Binding; D011487:Protein Conformation; D017510:Protein Folding; D055550:Protein Stability; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins