Computational investigations of folded self-avoiding walks related to protein folding

Abstract

Various subsets of self-avoiding walks naturally appear when investigating existing methods designed to predict the 3D conformation of a protein of interest. Two such subsets, namely the folded and the unfoldable self-avoiding walks, are studied computationally in this article. We show that these two sets are equal and correspond to the whole n-step self-avoiding walks for n≤14, but that they are different for numerous n≥108, which are common protein lengths. Concrete counterexamples are provided and the computational methods used to discover them are completely detailed. A tool for studying these subsets of walks related to both pivot moves and protein conformations is finally presented.

Keywords: Protein folding; Protein structure prediction; Self avoiding walks.