Multi-Scale Approach for Self-Assembly and Protein Folding

• Published in: Design of Self-Assembling Materials pp. 107 - 128
• Main Authors: Vilanova, Oriol, Bianco, Valentino, Franzese, Giancarlo
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2018; Springer; Springer International Publishing
• ISBN: 9783319715766; 3319715763
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-71578-0_5

We develop a multi-scale approach to simulate hydrated nanobio systems under realistic conditions (e.g., nanoparticles and protein solutions at physiological conditions over time-scales up to hours). We combine atomistic simulations of water at bio-interfaces (e.g., proteins or membranes) and nano-interfaces (e.g., nanoparticles or graphene sheets) and coarse-grain models of hydration water for protein folding and protein design. We study protein self-assembly and crystallization, in bulk or under confinement, and the kinetics of protein adsorption onto nanoparticles, verifying our predictions in collaboration with several experimental groups. We try to find answers for fundamental questions (Why water is so important for life? Which properties make water unique for biological processes?) and applications (Can we design better drugs? Can we limit protein-aggregations causing Alzheimer? How to implement nanotheranostic?). Here we focus only on the two larger scales of our approach: (1) The coarse-grain description of hydrated proteins and protein folding at sub-nanometric length-scale and milliseconds-to-seconds time-scales, and (2) the coarse-grain modeling of protein self-assembly on nanoparticles at 10-to-100 nm length-scale and seconds-to-hours time-scales.