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Atomic Scale Fractal Dimensionality In Proteins, Duccio Medini, A. Widom

Allan Widom

The soft condensed matter of biological organisms exhibits atomic motions whose properties depend strongly on temperature and hydration conditions. Due to the superposition of rapidly fluctuating alternative motions at both very low temperatures (quantum effects) and very high temperatures (classical Brownian motion regime), the dimension of an atomic "path" is in reality different from unity. In the intermediate temperature regime and under environmental conditions which sustain active biological functions, the fractal dimension of the sets upon which atoms reside is an open question. Measured values of the fractal dimension of the sets on which the Hydrogen atoms reside within the …