One way to Characterize the compact structures of lattice protein model

Abstract

On the study of protein folding, our understanding about the protein structures is limited. In this paper we find one way to characterize the compact structures of lattice protein model. A quantity called Partnum is given to each compact structure. The Partnum is compared with the concept Designability of protein structures emerged recently. It is shown that the highly designable structures have, on average, an atypical number of local degree of freedom. The statistical property of Partnum and its dependence on sequence length is also studied.