No Arabic abstract
Many commonly used force fields for protein systems such as AMBER, CHARMM, GROMACS, OPLS, and ECEPP have amino-acid-independent force-field parameters of main-chain torsion-energy terms. Here, we propose a new type of amino-acid-dependent torsion-energy terms in the force fields. As an example, we applied this approach to AMBER ff03 force field and determined new amino-acid-dependent parameters for $psi$ and $psi$ angles for each amino acid by using our optimization method, which is one of the knowledge-based approach. In order to test the validity of the new force-field parameters, we then performed folding simulations of $alpha$-helical and $beta$-hairpin peptides, using the optimized force field. The results showed that the new force-field parameters gave structures more consistent with the experimental implications than the original AMBER ff03 force field.
We report on the successful synthesis and hyperpolarization of N unprotected {alpha} amino acid ethyl acrylate esters and extensively, on an alanine derivative hyperpolarized by PHIP (4.4$pm$1% $^{13}$C-polarization), meeting required levels for in vivo detection. Using water as solvent increases biocompatibility and the absence of N-protection is expected to maintain biological activity.
A general strategy is described for finding which amino acid sequences have native states in a desired conformation (inverse design). The approach is used to design sequences of 48 hydrophobic and polar aminoacids on three-dimensional lattice structures. Previous studies employing a sequence-space Monte-Carlo technique resulted in the successful design of one sequence in ten attempts. The present work also entails the exploration of conformations that compete significantly with the target structure for being its ground state. The design procedure is successful in all the ten cases.
Diffusion processes in biological membranes are of interest to understand the macromolecular organisation and function of several molecules. Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching (FRAP) has been widely used as a method to analyse this processes using classical Brownian diffusion model. In the first part of this work, the analytical expression of the fluorescence recovery as a function of time has been established for anomalous diffusion due to long waiting times. Then, experimental fluorescence recoveries recorded in living cells on a membrane-bound protein have been analysed using three different models : normal Brownian diffusion, Brownian diffusion with an immobile fraction and anomalous diffusion due to long waiting times.
The twenty protein coding amino acids are found in proteomes with different relative abundances. The most abundant amino acid, leucine, is nearly an order of magnitude more prevalent than the least abundant amino acid, cysteine. Amino acid metabolic costs differ similarly, constraining their incorporation into proteins. On the other hand, sequence diversity is necessary for protein folding, function and evolution. Here we present a simple model for a cost-diversity trade-off postulating that natural proteomes minimize amino acid metabolic flux while maximizing sequence entropy. The model explains the relative abundances of amino acids across a diverse set of proteomes. We found that the data is remarkably well explained when the cost function accounts for amino acid chemical decay. More than one hundred proteomes reach comparable solutions to the trade-off by different combinations of cost and diversity. Quantifying the interplay between proteome size and entropy shows that proteomes can get optimally large and diverse.
A two amino acid (hydrophobic and polar) scheme is used to perform the design on target conformations corresponding to the native states of twenty single chain proteins. Strikingly, the percentage of successful identification of the nature of the residues benchmarked against naturally occurring proteins and their homologues is around 75 % independent of the complexity of the design procedure. Typically, the lowest success rate occurs for residues such as alanine that have a high secondary structure functionality. Using a simple lattice model, we argue that one possible shortcoming of the model studied may involve the coarse-graining of the twenty kinds of amino acids into just two effective types.