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Complexity of protein folding

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Abstract

It is believed that the native folded three-dimensional conformation of a protein is its lowest free energy state, or one of its lowest. It is shown here that both a two-and three-dimensional mathematical model describing the folding process as a free energy minimization problems is NP-hard. This means that the problem belongs to a large set of computational problems, assumed to be very hard (“conditionally intractable”). Some of the possible ramifications of this results are speculated upon.

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Author notes

  1. Aviezri S. Fraenkel

    Present address: Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, The Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100, Rehovot, Israel

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania, 19104-6395, Philadelphia, CA, U.S.A.

    Aviezri S. Fraenkel

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  1. Aviezri S. Fraenkel
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Fraenkel, A.S. Complexity of protein folding. Bltn Mathcal Biology 55, 1199–1210 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02460704

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02460704

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