Applications of normal mode analysis methods in computational protein design

Abstract

Recent advances in coarse-grained normal mode analysis methods make possible the large-scale prediction of the effect of mutations on protein stability and dynamics as well as the generation of biologically relevant conformational ensembles. Given the interplay between flexibility and enzymatic activity, the combined analysis of stability and dynamics using the Elastic Network Contact Model (ENCoM) method has ample applications in protein engineering in industrial and medical applications such as in computational antibody design. Here, we present a detailed tutorial on how to perform such calculations using ENCoM.