Coarse graining biomolecular systems

Abstract

Proteins in the living cell can interact with a wide variety of solutes, ranging from ions, peptides, other proteins, DNA to membranes. Charged groups play a major role and solution conditions such as pH and ionic strength can modulate the interactions significantly. Describing these systems in a statistical mechanical framework involves thousands of pair-interactions and therefore a certain amount of coarse graining is often required. We here present a conceptually simple "mesoscopic" protein model where the detailed charge distribution and surface topology is well preserved. Monte Carlo simulations based on this model can be used to accurately reproduce second virial coeffients, pH titration curves and binding constants of proteins. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.