Banavar Jayanth R, Hoang Trinh Xuan, Maritan Amos
Department of Physics, 104 Davey Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.
J Chem Phys. 2005 Jun 15;122(23):234910. doi: 10.1063/1.1940059.
Proteins, chain molecules of amino acids, behave in ways which are similar to each other yet quite distinct from standard compact polymers. We demonstrate that the Flory theorem, derived for polymer melts, holds for compact protein native state structures and is not incompatible with the existence of structured building blocks such as alpha helices and beta strands. We present a discussion on how the notion of the thickness of a polymer chain, besides being useful in describing a chain molecule in the continuum limit, plays a vital role in interpolating between conventional polymer physics and the phase of matter associated with protein structures.
蛋白质是氨基酸的链状分子，其行为方式彼此相似，但与标准的致密聚合物截然不同。我们证明，从聚合物熔体推导出来的弗洛里定理适用于致密的蛋白质天然态结构，并且与α螺旋和β链等结构化构建块的存在并不矛盾。我们讨论了聚合物链厚度的概念，除了在连续极限下描述链状分子时有用外，在传统聚合物物理学和与蛋白质结构相关的物质相之间的插值中也起着至关重要的作用。
