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Full-Text Articles in Biochemistry
Minimalistic Peptide-Based Supramolecular Systems Relevant To The Chemical Origin Of Life, Daniela Kroiss
Minimalistic Peptide-Based Supramolecular Systems Relevant To The Chemical Origin Of Life, Daniela Kroiss
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
All forms of life are based on biopolymers, which are made up of a selection of simple building blocks, such as amino acids, nucleotides, fatty acids and sugars. Their individual properties govern their interactions, giving rise to complex supramolecular structures with highly specialized functionality, including ligand recognition, catalysis and compartmentalization. In this thesis, we aim to answer the question whether short peptides could have acted as precursors of modern proteins during prebiotic evolution. Using a combination of experimental and computational techniques, we screened a large molecular search space for peptide sequences that are capable of forming supramolecular complexes with adenosine …
Solvation Thermodynamic Mapping In Computer Aided Drug Design, Steven Ramsey
Solvation Thermodynamic Mapping In Computer Aided Drug Design, Steven Ramsey
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
The displacement of water from surfaces upon biomolecular recognition and association makes a significant contribution to the free energy changes of these processes. We therefore posit that accurate characterization of local structural and thermodynamic molecular water properties can improve computational model accuracy and predictivity of recognition and association processes. In this thesis, we discuss Solvation Thermodynamic Mapping (STM) methods that we have developed using inhomogeneous fluid solvation theory (IST) to better characterize active site water structural and thermodynamic properties on protein surfaces and the open source tools that we have developed, GIST-CPPTRAJ and SSTMap, which implement these methods which we …