Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Dill KA
PROVIDER: S-EPMC45996 | biostudies-other | 1993 Mar
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 19930301 5
How does a protein find its native state without a globally exhaustive search? We propose the "HZ" (hydrophobic zipper) hypothesis: hydrophobic contacts act as constraints that bring other contacts into spatial proximity, which then further constrain and zip up the next contacts, etc. In contrast to helix-coil cooperativity, HZ-heteropolymer collapse cooperativity is driven by nonlocal interactions, causes sheet and irregular conformations in addition to helices, leads to secondary structures co ...[more]