Protein Science, Vol 9, Issue 3 452-465, Copyright © 2000 by The Protein Society

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Entropic barriers, transition states, funnels, and exponential protein folding kinetics: a simple model

DJ Bicout and A Szabo
Laboratory of Chemical Physics, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.). bicout@speck.niddk.nih.gov

This paper presents an analytically tractable model that captures the most elementary aspect of the protein folding problem, namely that both the energy and the entropy decrease as a protein folds. In this model, the system diffuses within a sphere in the presence of an attractive spherically symmetric potential. The native state is represented by a small sphere in the center, and the remaining space is identified with unfolded states. The folding temperature, the time-dependence of the populations, and the relaxation rate are calculated, and the folding dynamics is analyzed for both golf-course and funnel-like energy landscapes. This simple model allows us to illustrate a surprising number of concepts including entropic barriers, transition states, funnels, and the origin of single exponential relaxation kinetics.
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