Complex ligand-protein systems: a globally convergent iterative method for the n x m case
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Updated: Sep 30, 2026

Analyzing Protein Architectures and Protein-Ligand Complexes by Integrative Structural Mass Spectrometry
Published on: October 15, 2018
J R Pradines1, J Hasty, K Pakdaman
1Center for BioDynamics, Biomedical Engineering Department, Boston University, MA 02215, USA. pradines@bu.edu
Abstract:
When n types of univalent ligands are competing for the binding to m types of protein sites, the determination of the system composition at equilibrium reduces to the solving of a non-linear system of n equations in C = [0; 1](n). We present an iterative method to solve such a system. We show that the sequence presented here is always convergent, regardless of the initial value in C. We also prove that the limit of this sequence is the unique solution in C of the non-linear system of equations.
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