Abstract

The proposed work is concerned with exploring how some new ideas from condensed matter physics, the theory of spin glasses, may be used to illuminate our understanding of protein folding. Spin glasses are substances which have many disordered states. Folding is the last step in the process of uncoding genetic information into functional molecules. The understanding of folding could allow more rapid advances in genetic engineering. Defects of folding may be involved in some human diseases. The new ideas have to do with trying to use spin glass theory to understand the role of intermediates and misfolded structures in the folding process and how to avoid them in computer algorithms for predicting protein structure from sequence. Several analytical studies of the thermodynamics and dynamics of spin glass models of protein folding are proposed. Computer simulations are also planned that will use the analytical information to optimize folding algorithms.

  Funding Agency

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01GM044557-04
Application #
3303730
Study Section
Molecular and Cellular Biophysics Study Section (BBCA)
Project Start
1990-07-01
Project End
1995-06-30
Budget Start
1993-07-01
Budget End
1994-06-30
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
1993
Total Cost
Indirect Cost

  Institution

Name
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Department
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
041544081
City
Champaign
State
IL
Country
United States
Zip Code
61820

  Publications

Ferreiro, Diego U; Komives, Elizabeth A; Wolynes, Peter G (2018) Frustration, function and folding. Curr Opin Struct Biol 48:68-73
Chen, Mingchen; Schafer, Nicholas P; Zheng, Weihua et al. (2018) The Associative Memory, Water Mediated, Structure and Energy Model (AWSEM)-Amylometer: Predicting Amyloid Propensity and Fibril Topology Using an Optimized Folding Landscape Model. ACS Chem Neurosci 9:1027-1039
Lu, Wei; Schafer, Nicholas P; Wolynes, Peter G (2018) Energy landscape underlying spontaneous insertion and folding of an alpha-helical transmembrane protein into a bilayer. Nat Commun 9:4949
Chen, Mingchen; Lin, Xingcheng; Lu, Wei et al. (2017) Protein Folding and Structure Prediction from the Ground Up II: AAWSEM for ?/? Proteins. J Phys Chem B 121:3473-3482
Zheng, Weihua; Tsai, Min-Yeh; Wolynes, Peter G (2017) Comparing the Aggregation Free Energy Landscapes of Amyloid Beta(1-42) and Amyloid Beta(1-40). J Am Chem Soc 139:16666-16676
Sirovetz, Brian J; Schafer, Nicholas P; Wolynes, Peter G (2017) Protein structure prediction: making AWSEM AWSEM-ER by adding evolutionary restraints. Proteins 85:2127-2142
Chen, Mingchen; Wolynes, Peter G (2017) Aggregation landscapes of Huntingtin exon 1 protein fragments and the critical repeat length for the onset of Huntington's disease. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 114:4406-4411
Chen, Mingchen; Tsai, MinYeh; Zheng, Weihua et al. (2016) The Aggregation Free Energy Landscapes of Polyglutamine Repeats. J Am Chem Soc 138:15197-15203
Zheng, Weihua; Tsai, Min-Yeh; Chen, Mingchen et al. (2016) Exploring the aggregation free energy landscape of the amyloid-? protein (1-40). Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 113:11835-11840
Schafer, Nicholas P; Truong, Ha H; Otzen, Daniel E et al. (2016) Topological constraints and modular structure in the folding and functional motions of GlpG, an intramembrane protease. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 113:2098-103

Showing the most recent 10 out of 88 publications