A simple ansatz to describe thermodynamic quantities of peptides and proteins at low temperatures

Abstract

We describe a simple ansatz to approximate the low temperature behavior of proteins and peptides by a mean-field-like model which is analytically solvable. For a small peptide some thermodynamic quantities are calculated and compared with numerical results of an all-atoms simulation. Our approach can be used to determine the weights for a multicanonical simulation of the molecule under consideration.

Comments: 11 pages, Latex, 4 Postscript figures, to appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys. C (1997)