Understanding of SMFS barriers by means of energy profiles

Abstract

In the last years, Single Molecule Force Spectroscopy was more and more used to gain insight into the fundamental principles behind protein structure and stability. Nevertheless, the interpretation of the experimental findings is not so easy and additional computational approaches are needed to interpret them. Here, we proposed an approach based on interaction patterns between amino acids to explain the emergence of SMFS unfolding barriers in the experiment. With our approach, we can predict around 64% of the experimentally detectable barriers.