TEMPERATURE-INDUCED CHANGES IN PROTEIN HEAT-CAPACITY

In this paper, we describe the heat-capacity changes under heating as a process defined by phonon-vibrational exciton interactions. Followin g Davidov, we describe an alpha-helix as three noninteracting linear m olecular crystals. Further development is achieved by solving the Bolt zman's transport equation in the second quantization approximation for the quasi-particles: phonons and vibrational excitons. Heat capacity is defined in terms of the distribution function changes with temperat ure. We found out that heat absorption is realized through the transfe r energy from the molecular vibrations to the internal vibrational deg rees of freedom in the physiological temperature range. (C) 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.