Department of Biochemistry, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA.
Curr Opin Struct Biol. 2010 Apr;20(2):196-206. doi: 10.1016/j.sbi.2010.01.008. Epub 2010 Feb 16.
In recent years significant effort has been devoted to exploring the potential effects of macromolecular crowding on protein folding and association phenomena. Theoretical calculations and molecular simulations have, in particular, been exploited to describe aspects of protein behavior in crowded and confined conditions and many aspects of the simulated behavior have reflected, at least at a qualitative level, the behavior observed in experiments. One major and immediate challenge for the theorists is to now produce models capable of making quantitatively accurate predictions of in vitro behavior. A second challenge is to derive models that explain results obtained from experiments performed in vivo, the results of which appear to call into question the assumed dominance of excluded-volume effects in vivo.
近年来，人们投入了大量精力来探索大分子拥挤对蛋白质折叠和聚集现象的潜在影响。特别是，理论计算和分子模拟被用来描述蛋白质在拥挤和受限条件下的行为，并反映了模拟行为的许多方面，至少在定性水平上反映了实验中观察到的行为。理论家目前面临的一个主要和直接的挑战是，现在需要能够对体外行为进行定量准确预测的模型。第二个挑战是推导出可以解释在体内进行的实验中获得的结果的模型，这些结果似乎质疑了体内排除体积效应的主导地位。
