Thermodynamics of aggregation of two proteins

Abstract

We investigate aggregation mechanism of two proteins in a thermodynamically unambiguous manner by considering the finite size effect of free energy landscape of HP lattice protein model. Multi-Self-Overlap-Ensemble Monte Carlo method is used for numerical calculations. We find that a dimer can be formed spontaneously as a thermodynamically stable state when the system is small enough. It implies the possibility that the aggregation of proteins in a cell is triggered when they are confined in a small region by, for example, being surrounded by other macromolecules.We also find that the dimer exhibits a transition between unstable state and metastable state in the infinite system.