Folding Trp-cage to NMR resolution native structure using a coarse-grained model

We develop a coarse-grained protein model with a simplified amino acid interaction potential. We perform discrete molecular dynamics folding simulations of a small 20 residue protein – Trp-cage – from a fully extended conformation. We demonstrate the ability of the Trp-cage model to consistently reach conformations within 2Å backbone root-mean-square distance (RMSD) from the corresponding NMR structures. The minimum RMSD of Trp-cage conformations in the simulation can be smaller than 1.00Å. Our findings suggest that, at least for the case of Trp-cage, a detailed all-atom protein model with a physical molecular mechanics force field is not necessary to reach the native state of a protein. Our results also suggest that the success folding Trp-cage in our simulations and in the reported all-atom molecular mechanics simulations studies may be mainly due to the special stabilizing features specific to this miniprotein.