Title:Long-Range Contacts in Unfolding of Two-State Proteins
Volume: 24
Issue: 3
Author(s): Selvaraj Samuel and Harihar Balasubramanian
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Folding and unfolding rates, long-range contacts, bin interval, structural class, sequence separation.
Abstract: Predicting the unfolding rates of proteins remains complicated due to the intricacy present
in the unfolding pathway of proteins and further it was observed that the experimental unfolding data
were less while compared to folding kinetics. The aim of our present work is to show the variation in
long-range contacts observed in various sequence separation bins belonging to all-α, all-β and mixed
structural classes of 52 two-state proteins. In this work linear regression technique have been used
and regression equations were developed using long-range contacts observed from various sequence
separation bins. Also nine topological parameters developed from the 3-D structures of proteins are
related with their experimental unfolding rates and their variation in correlation coefficient is observed
before and after structural classification. The present work aims to show that long-range contacts
formed between residues which are sequentially far and spatially close in the 3-D structure of
proteins play a crucial role in the unfolding mechanism of proteins. Also importance of long-range
contacts in various experimental and theoretical studies of protein folding along with NMR studies of
the unfolded non-native states of proteins have been discussed.
