Definitely. In a short post I didn't seek to cover even the main
threads, which are vast, but if I'd added even one more this would
have been it. Hans Frauenfelder was/is of top importance in
keeping in the forefront of people's connsciousnes the importance
of fluctuations in proteins (Mb as an honorary enzyme...), and in
developing ways to deal with them usefully in both exoperimental
and theoretical terms. The concept of configurational entropy as a
get-out clause for how you can sort yourself out in the fluctuating
world while not ostensibly cheating on the 2nd Law [itself a
statistical concept in its usual form, which opens up a lot of
difficulties when discussing non-equilibrium states as so-called
"ensembles" - which by definition they are not] is, as far as I know,
mainly developed by him. I believe it will be found to have much in
common (wrt thermodynamics, mechanistics and function) with the
neutral networks (note the t in neutral, that's not a typo for neural)
that are discussed in the context of molecular (and directed)
evolution.
Over to experts here I hope. The prize ('how enzymes really work')
is worth it.
DBK.
> In addition to the very useful references posted by Douglas, I will
> get on one of MY favored soap boxes and mention the name of Hans
> Frauenfelder. Here are some of his papers, mostly elaborating the
> concept of "ruggen energy landscape" and using myoglobin as the sample
> system:
>[chomp]
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*(Prof.) Douglas B. Kell Phone: +44 1970 622334 *
*Director of Research *
*Institute of Biological Sciences Fax: +44 1970 622354 *
*Cledwyn Building *
*University of Wales, Email: dbk at aber.ac.uk *
*Aberystwyth SY23 3DD, U.K. http://gepasi.dbs.aber.ac.uk/ *
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