Importance of long-range interactions in protein folding

Abstract

Long-range interactions play an active role in the stability of protein molecules. In this work, we have analyzed the importance of long-range interactions in different structural classes of globular proteins in terms of residue distances. We found that 85% of residues are involved in long-range contacts. The residues occurring in the range of 4-10 residues apart contribute more towards long-range contacts in all-alpha proteins while the range is 11-20 in all-beta proteins. The hydrophobic residues Cys, Ile and Val prefer the 11-20 range and all other residues prefer the 4-10 range. The residues in all-beta proteins have an average of 3-8 long-range contacts whereas the residues in other classes have 1-4 long-range contracts. Furthermore, the preference of residue pairs to the folding and stability will be discussed.