Journal of Global Optimization
15 (3):235-260, October 1999.
© Kluwer Academic Publishers
Surmounting the Multiple-Minima Problem in Protein Folding
Harold A. Scheraga, Jooyoung Lee, Jaroslaw Pillardy, Yuan-Jie Ye, Adam Liwo,
Daniel Ripoll
Abstract
Protein folding is a very difficult global optimization problem. Furthermore it
is coupled with the difficult task of designing a reliable force field with
which one has to search for the global minimum. A summary of a series of
optimization methods developed and applied to various problems involving
polypeptide chains is described in this paper. With recent developments, a
computational treatment of the folding of globular proteins of up to 140
residues is shown to be tractable.
Keywords
Global optimization, Multiple-minima problem, Protein folding, Structure
prediction