Folding of a helix is critically stabilized by polarization of backbone hydrogen bonds: study in explicit water.

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Duan, Li Zhang, Qing Guo Tang, Bo Zhang, John Zenghui
Copyright Year	2012
Abstract	Multiple single-trajectory molecular dynamics (MD) simulation at room temperature (300 K) in explicit water was carried out to study the folding dynamics of an α-helix (PDB 2I9M ) using a polarized charge scheme that includes electronic polarization of backbone hydrogen bonds. Starting from an extended conformation, the 17-residue peptide was successfully folded into the native structure (α-helix) between 80 and 130 ns with a root-mean-square deviation of ~1.0 Å. Analysis of the time-dependent trajectories revealed that helix formation of the peptide started at the terminals and progressed toward the center of the peptide. For comparison, MD trajectories generated under various versions of standard AMBER force fields failed to show any significant or stable helix formation in our simulation. Our result shows clear evidence that the electronic polarization of backbone hydrogen bonds energetically stabilizes the helix formation and is critical to the stable folding of the short helix structure.
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
DOI	10.1021/jp212516g
PubMed reference number	22369598
Journal	Medline
Volume Number	116
Issue Number	10
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://itcs.ecnu.edu.cn/e/en/upload_image/files/DOI_10_1021_jp212516g.pdf
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://doi.org/10.1021/jp212516g
Journal	The journal of physical chemistry. B
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article