Discriminating compact nonnative structures from the native structure of globular proteins.

Prediction of the native tertiary structure of a globular protein from the primary sequence will require a potential energy model that can discriminate all nonnative structures from the native structure(s). A successful model must distinguish not only alternate structures that are very nonnative but also alternate structures that are compact and near-native. We describe here a method, based on molecular dynamics simulation, that allows generation of hundreds of compact alternate structures that are arbitrarily close to the native structure. In this way, a significant amount of conformational space in the neighborhood of the native structure can be sampled and these alternate structures can be used as a stringent test of protein folding models. We have used two sets of these alternate structures generated for six crystallographically characterized small globular proteins (1200 alternate structures in all) to test eight empirical energy models for their ability to discriminate alternate from native structures. Seven of the models fail to correctly identify at least some of the alternate structures as nonnative. An atomic solvation model is presented that succeeds in discriminating all 1200 alternate structures from native.