Protein folding/unfolding in the presence of interacting macromolecular crowders

• Recent years have seen an increasing number of biophysical studies of proteins being conducted in cells and concentrated protein solutions. In these experiments, compared to dilute-solution data, both stabilization and destabilization of globular proteins have been observed, which cannot be explained in terms of volume exclusion alone. For a fundamental understanding of the observed effects, there is a need for computational modeling beyond the level of hard-sphere crowders. This mini-review discusses recent efforts to simulate folding/unfolding properties of proteins in the presence of explicit macromolecular crowders. A Monte Carlo-based approach by us is described, which we recently applied to study the equilibrium folding thermodynamics of two peptides in the presence of explicit protein crowders.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Annan fysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Other Physics Topics (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Biofysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Biophysics (hsv//eng)

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