Constructing Globular, Sheeted, and Helical Polyalanine Structures using Nanotubes as Templates for Computational Studies

In this experiment polyalanine was folded into globular, sheeted, and helical structures through the use of carbon nanotubes. The rigidity of the nanotubes allowed for molding the polyalanine into the various structures. Nanotubes of different diameters and volumes were used in this experiment. Once the three dimensional peptide structures were formed and detached from the carbon nanotubes, a number of thermodynamic calculations were performed. Computational meth­ods were used to calculate parameters such as Gibbs free energy, enthalpy, entropy, and molecular volume. By attaining the measure­ments of the phi and psi angles, Ramachandran plots were constructed using linear, globular, sheeted, and helical protein structures