Conformational Mobility of Proteins

Abstract

Even the most general conception of the protein molecule — which is imagined as a homopolymer with a linear memory — necessarily involves its capability of fluctuation (Lifshits, 1968; Lifshits and Grosberg, 1973). Statistical analysis indicates that the homopolymeric coil executes continuous macroscopic pulsations, and that its density is not a thermodynamically reliable magnitude. If T < T _kr , a kind of coil-to-globule phase transition takes place under the effect of a sufficiently powerful compressing field.