期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:2000
卷号:97
期号:25
页码:13614-13618
DOI:10.1073/pnas.240245297
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:We study the thermodynamic behavior of a model protein with 54 amino acids that forms a three-helix bundle in its native state. The model contains three types of amino acids and five to six atoms per amino acid and has the Ramachandran torsional angles {varphi}i, {psi}i as its degrees of freedom. The force field is based on hydrogen bonds and effective hydrophobicity forces. For a suitable choice of the relative strength of these interactions, we find that the three-helix-bundle protein undergoes an abrupt folding transition from an expanded state to the native state. Also shown is that the corresponding one- and two-helix segments are less stable than the three-helix sequence.