title: Modulation of Folding Internal Friction by Local and Global Barrier Heights.
abstract: Recent experiments have revealed an unexpected deviation from a first power dependence of protein relaxation times on solvent viscosity, an effect that has been attributed to "internal friction". One clear source of internal friction in protein dynamics is the isomerization of dihedral angles. A key outstanding question is whether the global folding barrier height influences the measured internal friction, based on the observation that the folding rates of fast-folding proteins, with smaller folding free energy barriers, tend to exhibit larger internal friction. Here, by studying two alanine-based peptides, we find that systematic variation of global folding barrier heights has little effect on the internal friction for folding rates. On the other hand, increasing local torsion angle barriers leads to increased internal friction, which is consistent with solvent memory effects being the origin of the viscosity dependence. Thus, it appears that local torsion transitions determine the viscosity dependence of the diffusion coefficient on the global coordinate and, in turn, internal friction effects on the folding rate.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Chemical Physics, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-0520, United States.
authors.forename: Wenwei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: CIC nanoGUNE, 20018 Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.|IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, María Díaz de Haro 3, 48013 Bilbao, Spain.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: de Sancho
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Chemical Physics, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-0520, United States.
authors.forename: Robert B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Best
mesh_terms: D004151:Dipeptides / Q000737:chemistry; D004735:Energy Transfer; D017276:Friction; D007536:Isomerism; D008956:Models, Chemical; D015394:Molecular Structure; D017510:Protein Folding; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D014783:Viscosity
chemical_list: D004151:Dipeptides; D011506:Proteins; C002956:alanylalanine