Coarse-grained modeling of protein structure, dynamics and protein-protein interactions

Theoretical prediction of protein structures and dynamics is essent ial for understanding the molecular basis of drug action, metabolic and signaling pathway s in living cells, designing new technologies in the life science and material sciences . We developed and validated a novel multiscale methodology for the study of protein folding proces ses including flexible docking of proteins and peptides. The new modeling technique starts fr om coarse-grained large-scale simulations, followed by selection of the most plausible final structu res and intermediates and, finally, by an all-atom rectification of the obtained structures. Except f or the most basic bioinformatics tools, the entire computational methodology is based on the models an d algorithms developed in our lab. The coarse-grained simulations are based on a high-resol ution lattice representation of protein structures, a knowledge based statistical for ce field and efficient Monte Carlo dynamics schemes, including Replica Exchange algorithms. This p aper focuses on the description of the coarse-grained CABS model and its selected applications.