Zusammenfassung
Although far from routine, simulating the folding of specific short
protein chains on the computer, at a detailed atomic level, is starting
to become a reality. This remarkable progress, which has been made over
the last decade or so, allows a fundamental aspect of the protein
folding process to be addressed, namely its statistical nature. In
order to make quantitative comparisons with experimental kinetic data a
complete ensemble view of folding must be achieved, with key
observables averaged over the large number of microscopically different
folding trajectories available to a protein chain. Here we review
recent advances in atomic-level protein folding simulations and the new
insight provided by them into the protein folding process. An important
element in understanding ensemble folding kinetics are methods for
analyzing many separate folding trajectories, and we discuss techniques
developed to condense the large amount of information contained in an
ensemble of trajectories into a manageable picture of the folding
process.
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