The effect of temperature on mechanical unfolding of proteins is studied using a Go-like model with a realistic contact map and Lennard-Jones contact interactions. The behavior of the I27 domain of titin and its serial repeats is contrasted to that of simple secondary structures. In all cases, thermal fluctuations accelerate the unraveling process, decreasing the unfolding force nearly linearly...

Both the refolding kinetics and unfolding kinetics of ribonuclease A have been measured at the same final conditions, as a function of temperature at pH 3.9, by stopped-flow (pH-jump) experiments; absorbance changes at 240 and 286.5 nm were measured. Refolding follows first-order kinetics in the upper two-thirds of the thermal transition zone. Under the same conditions, the unfolding kinetics a...

Most proteins that are to be imported into the mitochondrial matrix are synthesized as precursors, each composed of an N-terminal targeting sequence followed by a mature domain. Precursors are recognized through their targeting sequences by receptors at the mitochondrial surface and are then threaded through import channels into the matrix. Both the targeting sequence and the mature domain cont...

An unfolding of a polyhedron P is obtained by ‘cutting’ the surface of P in such a way that it can be flattened into the plane into a single polygon. For most practical and theoretic applications, it is desirable for an algorithm to produce an unfolding which is simple, that is, non-overlapping. Currently, two methods for unfolding which guarantee non-overlap for convex polyhedra are known, the...

The tumor suppressor p53 plays a crucial role in the cell cycle checkpoints, DNA repair, and apoptosis. p53 consists of a natively unfolded N-terminal region (NTR), central DNA binding domain (DBD), C-terminal tetramerization domain, and regulatory region. In this paper, the interactions between the DBD and the NTR, and between the DBD and DNA were investigated by measuring changes in the mecha...

This note shows by means of simple counterexamples that some key results presented by He and Lemmon on the liveness verification and enforcing of Petri nets using unfolding are incorrect. As a result, the applicability of unfolding for Petri net supervision is still an open issue. 1 Introduction Recently, He and Lemmon have presented an original approach for the analysis and control of bounded ...

Is the mechanical unraveling of protein domains by atomic force microscopy (AFM) just a technological feat or a true measurement of their unfolding? By engineering a protein made of tandem repeats of identical Ig modules, we were able to get explicit AFM data on the unfolding rate of a single protein domain that can be accurately extrapolated to zero force. We compare this with chemical unfoldi...

Thermodynamic stability and unfolding kinetics of proteins are typically determined by monitoring protein unfolding with spectroscopic probes, such as circular dichroism (CD) and fluorescence. UV absorbance at 230nm (A(230)) is also known to be sensitive to protein conformation. However, its feasibility for quantitative analysis of protein energetics has not been assessed. Here we evaluate A(23...

For proteins that fold by two-state kinetics, the folding and unfolding processes are believed to be closely related to their native structures. In particular, folding and unfolding rates are influenced by the native structures of proteins. Thus, we focus on finding important topological quantities from a protein structure that determine its unfolding rate. After constructing graphs from protei...

OBJECTIVE To describe adaptive strategies of time use among mothers with children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and, in particular, the adaptive strategies of unfolding occupations that were commonly used by these mothers. METHOD In-depth interviews were conducted with 17 families with children with ADHD. Parents were asked to describe their family's daily schedule, rou...