The statistical mechanics of energy landscapes has resolved the paradoxes of how information-bearing matter can assemble itself spontaneously. I will explain how our current understanding of protein folding landscapes not only leads to successful schemes for predicting protein structure from sequence but also has given quantitative insight into how folding and function shape molecular evolution. While protein folding is, in the main, thermodynamically controlled and not kinetically limited, the functions of the cell are carried out in a kinetically controlled, nonequilibrium fashion using allostery. I will show how energy landscape theory provides tools for understanding the allosteric transitions of proteins involved in gene regulatory circuits.

Energy landscape theory: From folding to function in genetic networking

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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