Publication Date:
2012-03-01
Description:
The transition path is the tiny fraction of an equilibrium molecular trajectory when a transition occurs as the free-energy barrier between two states is crossed. It is a single-molecule property that contains all the mechanistic information on how a process occurs. As a step toward observing transition paths in protein folding, we determined the average transition-path time for a fast- and a slow-folding protein from a photon-by-photon analysis of fluorescence trajectories in single-molecule Forster resonance energy transfer experiments. Whereas the folding rate coefficients differ by a factor of 10,000, the transition-path times differ by a factor of less than 5, which shows that a fast- and a slow-folding protein take almost the same time to fold when folding actually happens. A very simple model based on energy landscape theory can explain this result.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3878298/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3878298/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Chung, Hoi Sung -- McHale, Kevin -- Louis, John M -- Eaton, William A -- Z99 DK999999/Intramural NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2012 Feb 24;335(6071):981-4. doi: 10.1126/science.1215768.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Laboratory of Chemical Physics, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD 20892-0520, USA. chunghoi@niddk.nih.gov〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22363011" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Amino Acid Sequence
;
Bacterial Proteins/*chemistry
;
Carrier Proteins/*chemistry
;
Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer
;
Kinetics
;
Likelihood Functions
;
Models, Molecular
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Photons
;
Protein Conformation
;
*Protein Folding
;
Protein Interaction Domains and Motifs
;
Protein Structure, Tertiary
;
Thermodynamics
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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