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. 1993 Nov;55(6):1199-210.
doi: 10.1007/BF02460704.

Complexity of protein folding

A S Fraenkel  1
Affiliations

Complexity of protein folding

A S Fraenkel. Bull Math Biol. 1993 Nov.

Abstract

It is believed that the native folded three-dimensional conformation of a protein is its lowest free energy state, or one of its lowest. It is shown here that both a two- and three-dimensional mathematical model describing the folding process as a free energy minimization problem is NP-hard. This means that the problem belongs to a large set of computational problems, assumed to be very hard ("conditionally intractable"). Some of the possible ramifications of this result are speculated upon.

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References

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