Mechanical unfolding of proteins: reduction to a single-reaction coordinate unfolding potential, and an application of the Jarzynski Relation

D. K. West, E. Paci, P. D. Olmsted

University of Leeds

Single molecule force spectroscopy (AFM, optical tweezers, etc) has revolutionized the study of many biopolymers, including DNA, RNA, and proteins. In this talk I will discuss recent work in the Leeds group on modelling of mechanical unfolding of proteins, as often probed by AFM. I will address the unfolding of protein concatamers, what can be learned from prising apart proteins in different directions, and different ways for coarse-graining the entire energy landscape onto an effective one dimensional unfolding potential. Finally, I will discuss the application of the Jarzynski Relation to extract equilibrium free energies from nonequlibrium unfolding experiments.