MULTIPLE TIME SCALES FOR DISPERSIVE KINETICS IN EARLY EVENTS OF PEPTIDE FOLDING

Early events involving local collapse and helix formation manifested b y the disulphide recombination of a de-novo peptide, over the time sca le from 1 ps to 10 mu s, are shown to fit equally well to a stretched exponential (alpha = 0.086 +/- 0.003) and by an asymptotic power-law d ecay (beta = 0.331 +/- 0.004). For inhomogeneous recombination kinetic s each decay pattern leads to a different distribution of relaxation t imes. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.