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Probing the Energy Landscapes of Biomolecular Folding and Function

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Physics of Molecular and Cellular Processes

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the development and application of energy landscape principles to study biomolecular dynamics. Over the last several decades, our understanding of biomolecular folding has transitioned from traditional biochemical ideas to a statistical-mechanical approach to studying dynamics. These fundamental concepts, which were developed for protein folding, are now ready to be extended and applied to investigate emergent phenomena related to the functional dynamics of biomolecules.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Technically, folding is not a pure phase transition, due to the finite size of a single protein.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics sponsored by the NSF (Grant PHY-2019745). PCW was supported by a National Science Foundation Grants MCB-1350312 and MCB-1915843. JNO was also supported by the NSF- CHE 1614101. JNO is a CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research sponsored by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Paul Charles Whitford

  2. Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    José N. Onuchic

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  1. Paul Charles Whitford
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Correspondence to Paul Charles Whitford .

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  1. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Krastan B. Blagoev

  2. Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Herbert Levine

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Whitford, P.C., Onuchic, J.N. (2022). Probing the Energy Landscapes of Biomolecular Folding and Function. In: Blagoev, K.B., Levine, H. (eds) Physics of Molecular and Cellular Processes. Graduate Texts in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98606-3_2

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