Unger R, Moult J
Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology, Maryland Biotechnology Institute, University of Maryland, Rockville 20850.
Bull Math Biol. 1993 Nov;55(6):1183-98. doi: 10.1007/BF02460703.
The protein folding problem and the notion of NP-completeness and NP-hardness are discussed. A lattice model is suggested to capture the essence of protein folding. For this model we present a proof that finding the lowest free energy conformation belongs to the class of NP-hard problems. The implications of the proof are discussed and we suggest that the natural folding process cannot be considered as a search for the global free energy minimum. However, we suggest an explanation as to why, for many proteins, the native functional conformation may coincide with the lowest free energy conformation.
本文讨论了蛋白质折叠问题以及NP完全性和NP难的概念。提出了一种晶格模型以捕捉蛋白质折叠的本质。对于该模型，我们给出了一个证明，即找到最低自由能构象属于NP难问题的范畴。讨论了该证明的意义，并提出自然折叠过程不能被视为对全局自由能最小值的搜索。然而，我们给出了一个解释，说明为什么对于许多蛋白质来说，天然功能构象可能与最低自由能构象一致。
