Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer
Systeme
International Workshop on
Biological Evolution and Statistical
Physics
May 10-14, 2000
Evolutionary Perspectives on
Protein Structure, Stability, and Folding
Richard Goldstein
Chemistry Dept., Biophysics Research Division
University of Michigan, 48109-1055 Ann Arbor, MI
richardg@umich.edu
Proteins fold into their native-state conformations in milliseconds
to seconds, ignoring theoretical estimates that this process should take
many times the age of the universe. Much work is directed to understanding
how proteins are so much smarter than theorists, who cannot even reliably
predict what the final folded states will be. Proteins have one major
advantage over theorists - proteins have been working on this problem for
billions of years. We can consider different ways in which proteins
may have evolved to solve the
protein-folding problem. Using simple theoretical models, we
can show how evolutionary considerations can explain many of the observed
properties of proteins such as the way proteins fold, the distribution
of observed protein structures, the marginal stability of proteins, and
how the evolutionary robustness of protein structures co-exists with sequence
plasticity.
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