Analysis of Structural Stability of Chignolin.

We discuss the stability of an entire protein and the influence of main chains and side chains of individual amino acids to investigate the protein-folding mechanism. For this purpose, we calculated the solvation free-energy contribution of individual atoms using the three-dimensional reference interaction site model with the atomic decomposition method. We generated structures of chignolin miniprotein by a molecular dynamics simulation and classified them into six types: native 1, native 2, misfolded 1, misfolded 2, intermediate, and unfolded states. The total energies of the native (-171.1 kcal/mol) and misfolded (-171.2 kcal/mol) states were almost the same and lower than those of the intermediate (-158.5 kcal/mol) and unfolded (-148.1 kcal/mol) states; however, their components were different. In the native state, the side-chain interaction between Thr6 and Thr8 is important for the formation of π-turn. On the other hand, the hydrogen bonds between the atoms of the main chains in the misfolded state become stronger than those in the intermediate state.