TitleIdentifying proteins of high designability via surface-exposure patterns.
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2002
AuthorsEmberly, EG, Miller, J, Zeng, C, Wingreen, NS, Tang, C
JournalProteins
Volume47
Issue3
Pagination295-304
Date Published2002 May 15
KeywordsHydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions, Models, Molecular, Peptides, Protein Conformation, Protein Folding, Proteins
Abstract

Using an off-lattice model, we fully enumerate folded conformations of polypeptide chains of up to N = 19 monomers. Structures are found to differ markedly in designability, defined as the number of sequences with that structure as a unique lowest-energy conformation. We find that designability is closely correlated with the pattern of surface exposure of the folded structure. For longer chains, complete enumeration of structures is impractical. Instead, structures can be randomly sampled, and relative designability estimated either from designability within the random sample, or directly from surface-exposure pattern. We compare the surface-exposure patterns of those structures identified as highly designable to the patterns of naturally occurring proteins.

Alternate JournalProteins