Application of topological soliton in modeling protein folding: Recent progress and perspective

Abstract

Proteins are important biological molecules whose structures are closely related to their specific functions. Understanding how the protein folds under physical principles, known as the protein folding problem, is one of the main tasks in modern biophysics. Coarse-grained methods play an increasingly important role in the simulation of protein folding, especially for large proteins. In recent years, we proposed a novel coarse-grained method derived from the topological soliton model, in terms of the backbone C α chain. In this review, we will first systematically address the theoretical method of topological soliton. Then some successful applications will be displayed, including the thermodynamics simulation of protein folding, the property analysis of dynamic conformations, and the multi-scale simulation scheme. Finally, we will give a perspective on the development and application of topological soliton.