Evolutionary computer programming of protein folding and structure predictions

In order to understand the mechanism of protein folding and to assist the rational de-novo design of fast-folding, non-aggregating and stable artificial enzymes it is very helpful to be able to simulate protein folding reactions and to predict the structures of proteins and other biomacromolecules. Here, we use a method of computer programming called "evolutionary computer programming" in which a program evolves depending on the evolutionary pressure exerted on the program. In the case of the presented application of this method on a computer program for folding simulations, the evolutionary pressure exerted was towards faster finding deep minima in the energy landscape of protein folding. Already after 20 evolution steps, the evolved program was able to find deep minima in the energy landscape more than 10 times faster than the original program prior to the evolution process.