Overview
- Nominated as an outstanding contribution by the University of Frankfurt
- Represents a fertile encounter between physics and life-sciences
- Presents the first physically motivated quantitative description of the protein folding/unfolding transition
Part of the book series: Springer Theses (Springer Theses)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
Keywords
- Hydrophobic/Hydrophilic Interactions
- Phase Transitions in Finite Systems
- Polypeptides/Macromolecular Degrees of Freedom
- Prize winning thesis
- Protein Folding
- Statistical Mechanics
- folding unfolding transitions
- helix coil transitions in polypeptides
- protein folding/unfolding transition
- statistical physics of protein folding
- Protein Structure
About this book
There are nearly 100 000 different protein sequences encoded in the human genome, each with its own specific fold. Understanding how a newly formed polypeptide sequence finds its way to the correct fold is one of the greatest challenges in the modern structural biology. The aim of this thesis is to provide novel insights into protein folding by considering the problem from the point of view of statistical mechanics.
The thesis starts by investigating the fundamental degrees of freedom in polypeptides that are responsible for the conformational transitions. This knowledge is then applied in the statistical mechanics description of helix↔coil transitions in polypeptides. Finally, the theoretical formalism is generalized to the case of proteins in an aqueous environment. The major novelty of this work lies in combining (a) a formalism based on fundamental physical properties of the system and (b) the resulting possibility of describing the folding↔unfolding transitions quantitatively. The clear physical nature of the formalism opens the way to further applications in a large variety of systems and processes.
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Theory of Phase Transitions in Polypeptides and Proteins
Authors: Alexander V. Yakubovich
Series Title: Springer Theses
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22592-5
Publisher: Springer Berlin, Heidelberg
eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Physics and Astronomy (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-642-22591-8Published: 02 September 2011
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-642-26953-0Published: 27 November 2013
eBook ISBN: 978-3-642-22592-5Published: 01 September 2011
Series ISSN: 2190-5053
Series E-ISSN: 2190-5061
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 121
Number of Illustrations: 28 b/w illustrations, 11 illustrations in colour
Topics: Biological and Medical Physics, Biophysics, Protein Structure, Phase Transitions and Multiphase Systems, Polymer Sciences, Mathematical Methods in Physics