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We inquire how structure emerges during the process of protein folding. For this we scrutinize collective many-atom motions during all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. We introduce, develop, and employ various topological techniques, in combination with analytic tools that we deduce from the concept of integrable models and structure of discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The example we consider is an a-helical subunit of the HIV envelope glycoprotein gp41. The helical structure is stable when the subunit is part of the biological oligomer. But in isolation, the helix becomes unstable, and the monomer starts deforming. We follow the process computationally. We interpret the evolving structure both in terms of a backbone based Heisenberg spin chain and in terms of a side chain based XY spin chain. We find that in both cases the formation of protein supersecondary structure is akin the formation of a topological Bloch domain wall along a spin chain. During the process we identify three individual Bloch walls and we show that each of them can be modelled with a precision of tenths to several angstroms in terms of a soliton solution to a discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm is applied to model the low-temperature crystallographic Cα backbone structure of sperm whale myoglobin. The Glauber protocol is employed to simulate its response to an increase in ambient temperature. The myoglobin is found to unfold from its native state by a succession of a-helical intermediates, fully in line with the observed folding and unfolding patterns in denaturation experiments. In particular, a molten globule intermediate is identified with experimentally correct attributes. A detailed, experimentally testable contact map is constructed to characterize the specifics of the unfolding pathway, including the formation of long-range interactions. The results reveal how the unfolding process of a protein is driven by the interplay between, and a successive melting of, its modular secondary structure components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose to combine a mean-field approach with all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) into a multistage algorithm that can model protein folding and dynamics over very long time periods yet with atomic-level precision. As an example, we investigate an isolated monomeric Myc oncoprotein that has been implicated in carcinomas including those in colon, breast, and lungs. Under physiological conditions a monomeric Myc is presumed to be an example of intrinsically disordered proteins that pose a serious challenge to existing modeling techniques. We argue that a room-temperature monomeric Myc is in a dynamical state, it oscillates between different conformations that we identify. For this we adopt the Cα backbone of Myc in a crystallographic heteromer as an initial ansatz for the monomeric structure. We construct a multisoliton of the pertinent Landau free energy to describe the Cα profile with ultrahigh precision. We use Glauber dynamics to resolve how the multisoliton responds to repeated increases and decreases in ambient temperature. We confirm that the initial structure is unstable in isolation. We reveal a highly degenerate ground-state landscape, an attractive set towards which Glauber dynamics converges in the limit of vanishing ambient temperature. We analyze the thermal stability of this Glauber attractor using room-temperature molecular dynamics. We identify and scrutinize a particularly stable subset in which the two helical segments of the original multisoliton align in parallel next to each other. During the MD time evolution of a representative structure from this subset, we observe intermittent quasiparticle oscillations along the C-terminal α helix, some of which resemble a translating Davydov's Amide-I soliton. We propose that the presence of oscillatory motion is in line with the expected intrinsically disordered character of Myc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]