The local topological free energy of proteins

• The Writhe and Torsion are used to define a local topological free energy of proteins. High conformations independent sequence. secondary structure. may be related the rate limiting step in protein folding. Protein folding, process by which proteins attain 3-dimensional conformation necessary for their function, remains an important unsolved problem biology. A major gap our understanding is how properties relate global properties. In this manuscript, we use introduce new topological/geometrical that can associated 4 consecutive amino acids along backbone. By analyzing culled dataset from PDB, results show high sequence involved set 2-state single domain proteins, find total these correlates with experimentally observed folding rates reported Plaxco et al. (2000).