Physical mechanism for biopolymers to aggregate and maintain in non-equilibrium states

Abstract Many human or animal diseases are related to aggregation of proteins. A viable biological organism should maintain in non-equilibrium states. How protein aggregate and why biological organisms can maintain in non-equilibrium states are not well understood. As a first step to understand such...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wen-Jong Ma, Chin-Kun Hu
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Nature Portfolio 2017
Materias:
R
Q
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/0b0432e4ee6540cbb8238651d63ece96
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Abstract Many human or animal diseases are related to aggregation of proteins. A viable biological organism should maintain in non-equilibrium states. How protein aggregate and why biological organisms can maintain in non-equilibrium states are not well understood. As a first step to understand such complex systems problems, we consider simple model systems containing polymer chains and solvent particles. The strength of the spring to connect two neighboring monomers in a polymer chain is controlled by a parameter s with s → ∞ for rigid-bond. The strengths of bending and torsion angle dependent interactions are controlled by a parameter s A with s A  → −∞ corresponding to no bending and torsion angle dependent interactions. We find that for very small s A , polymer chains tend to aggregate spontaneously and the trend is independent of the strength of spring. For strong springs, the speed distribution of monomers in the parallel (along the direction of the spring to connect two neighboring monomers) and perpendicular directions have different effective temperatures and such systems are in non-equilibrium states.