Zwanzig R, Szabo A, Bagchi B
Laboratory of Chemical Physics, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1992 Jan 1;89(1):20-2. doi: 10.1073/pnas.89.1.20.
Levinthal's paradox is that finding the native folded state of a protein by a random search among all possible configurations can take an enormously long time. Yet proteins can fold in seconds or less. Mathematical analysis of a simple model shows that a small and physically reasonable energy bias against locally unfavorable configurations, of the order of a few kT, can reduce Levinthal's time to a biologically significant size.
莱文索尔悖论是指,在所有可能的构象中通过随机搜索找到蛋白质的天然折叠状态可能需要极长的时间。然而,蛋白质能够在数秒或更短时间内完成折叠。对一个简单模型的数学分析表明,对局部不利构象存在一个小的且符合物理常理的能量偏向,其量级为几个kT,这可以将莱文索尔时间缩短到具有生物学意义的时长。