Effect of Single-Site Mutations on HP Lattice Proteins

Abstract

We developed a heuristic method for determining the ground-state degeneracy of hydrophobic-polar (HP) lattice proteins, based on Wang-Landau and multicanonical sampling. It is applied during comprehensive studies of single-site mutations in specific HP proteins with different sequences. The effects in which we are interested include structural changes in ground-states, changes of ground-state energy, degeneracy, and thermodynamic properties of the system. With respect to mutations, both extremely sensitive and insensitive positions in the HP sequence have been found. That is, ground state energies and degeneracies, as well as other thermodynamic and structural quantities may be either largely unaffected or may change significantly due to mutation.