ARTIST: an activated method in internal coordinate space for sampling protein energy landscapes

We present the first applications of an activated method in internal coordinate space for sampling all-atom protein conformations, the activation-relaxation technique for internal coordinate space trajectories (ARTIST). This method differs from all previous internal coordinate-based studies aimed at folding or refining protein structures in that conformational changes result from identifying and crossing well-defined saddle points connecting energy minima. Our simulations of four model proteins containing between 4 and 47 amino acids indicate that this method is efficient for exploring conformational space in both sparsely and densely packed environments, and offers new perspectives for applications ranging from computer-aided drug design to supramolecular assembly.