U.S.-Argentina Cooperative Science Program: Research on theOrigin of Helix Stability

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This award from the U.S.- Argentina Cooperative Science Program supports research in chemistry to be conducted by Dr. Harold A. Scheraga of Cornell University and Dr. Jorge Vilas of the Institute of Applied Mathematics (IMASL), National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET), Argentina. The main goal of the work is to understand the physical origin of the relationship between the amino-acid sequence and the stability of alpha-helices in small peptides at different pH's and temperatures. The project will combine two approaches, namely molecular mechanics calculations and statistical mechanics theory. Statistical mechanics incorporates the information obtained by molecular mechanics in order to predict the most stable conformations of both new copolypeptide sequences and more complex systems. The numerous experimental observations on short peptides that are available from both NMR and CD measurements will be used in concert with the proposed analysis to provide an understanding of the factors leading to helix stability, and a reliable test of the empirical potentials used to describe peptides and proteins. The project involves two established experts in the field of molecular and statistical mechanics. ***//