CONCEPTUAL ASPECTS OF THE PROTEIN FOLDING PROBLEM

拟议的工作涉及探索如何从 凝聚态物理，自旋玻璃理论，可以用来 阐明我们对蛋白质折叠的理解。旋转眼镜是 具有许多无序状态的物质。折叠是最后一步 将遗传信息分解成功能分子的过程。这个 对折叠的了解可能会使遗传学研究取得更快的进展 工程学。折叠缺陷可能与某些人类疾病有关。 新的想法与试图利用自旋玻璃理论来理解 中间体和错误折叠结构在折叠过程中的作用 以及如何在预测蛋白质的计算机算法中避免它们 从序列到结构。热力学的几个解析研究 提出了蛋白质折叠的自旋玻璃动力学模型。 还计划进行计算机模拟，以使用分析的 优化折叠算法的信息。

The proposed work is concerned with exploring how some new ideas from condensed matter physics, the theory of spin glasses, may be used to illuminate our understanding of protein folding. Spin glasses are substances which have many disordered states. Folding is the last step in the process of uncoding genetic information into functional molecules. The understanding of folding could allow more rapid advances in genetic engineering. Defects of folding may be involved in some human diseases. The new ideas have to do with trying to use spin glass theory to understand the role of intermediates and misfolded structures in the folding process and how to avoid them in computer algorithms for predicting protein structure from sequence. Several analytical studies of the thermodynamics and dynamics of spin glass models of protein folding are proposed. Computer simulations are also planned that will use the analytical information to optimize folding algorithms.