A computational solution to the protein folding problem is the holy grail of biomolecular simulation and of the corresponding force fields. The complexity of the systems used for folding simulations precludes a direct feedback between the simulations and the force fields, thus necessitating the study of simpler systems with sufficient experimental data to allow force field optimization and vali...

Hox genes encode a highly conserved family of transcription factors with fundamental roles in body patterning during embryogenesis. Studies in mouse and chick have shown that the 5′ HoxD and HoxA genes are critical for vertebrate limb and urogenital tract development. In humans, mutations in HOXD13 and HOXA13 cause the rare dominantly inherited limb malformation syndromes synpolydactyly (SPD, M...

The physicochemical effects of the solvent DMSO on protein confirmation remain enigmatic despite its diverse applications in the proteomics field. Many attempts to understand the effects of DMSO have focused on the unfolding of a-helical-rich proteins; however, the cause of the profound stability of bsheets in DMSO remains to be elucidated. Therefore, we designed an octapeptide as a b-hairpin f...

Oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy (OPMD) is an adult-onset syndrome characterized by progressive degeneration of particular muscles. OPMD is caused by short GCG repeat expansions within the gene encoding the nuclear poly(A)-binding protein 1 (PABPN1) that extend an N-terminal polyalanine tract in the protein. Mutant PABPN1 aggregates as nuclear inclusions in OMPD patient muscles. We have creat...

Effects of the attractive and repulsive parts of hydrophobic interactions on α helices and β sheets in small peptides are investigated using a simple atomic potential. Typically, a physical spatial range of attraction tends to favor β sheets, but α helices would be favored if the attractive range were more extended. We also found that desolvation barriers favor β sheets in collapsed conformatio...

The success of the molecular-replacement method for solving protein structures from experimental diffraction data depends on the availability of a suitable search model. Typically, this is derived from a previously solved structure, sometimes by homology modelling. Very recently, Baker, Read and coworkers have demonstrated a successful molecular-replacement case based on an ab initio model gene...

Helices are the "hydrogen atoms" of biomolecular complexity; the DNA/RNA double hairpin and protein α-helix ubiquitously form the building blocks of life's constituents at the nanometer scale. Nevertheless, the formation processes of these structures, especially the dynamical pathways and rates, remain challenging to predict and control. Here, we present a general analytical method for construc...

Accurate force fields are essential for the success of molecular dynamics simulations. In apparent contrast to the conformational preferences of most force fields, recent NMR experiments suggest that short polyalanine peptides in water populate the polyproline II structure almost exclusively. To investigate this apparent contradiction, with its ramifications for the assessment of molecular forc...

The Forkhead transcription factor FOXL2 plays a crucial role in ovarian development and maintenance. In humans, its mutations lead to craniofacial abnormalities, isolated or associated with ovarian dysfunction. Using a combinatorial approach, we identified and characterized a FoxL2 response element (FLRE) and showed that it is highly specific and that it diverges from that of other Forkhead tra...