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Updated: Aug 8, 2026

Microfluidic Mixers for Studying Protein Folding
Published on: April 10, 2012
Short-time dynamics of the helix-coil transition in polypeptides
Everaldo Arashiro1, J R Drugowich de Felício, Ulrich H E Hansmann
1Departamento de Física e Matemática, FFCLRP Universidade de São Paulo, Avenida Bandeirantes 3900, CEP 14040-901, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil. everaldo@pg.ffclrp.usp.br
Abstract:
We study the critical relaxation of the helix-coil transition in all-atom models of polyalanine chains. We show that at the critical temperature the decay of a completely helical conformation can be described by scaling relations that allow us estimating the pertinent critical exponents. The present approach opens a new way for characterizing transitions in proteins and may lead to a better understanding of their folding mechanism. An application of the technique to the 34-residue human parathyroid fragment PTH(1-34) supports universality of the helix-coil transition in homopolymers and (helical) proteins.
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