A DETERMINISTIC APPROACH TO THE PROTEIN DESIGN PROBLEM

We have considered the problem of protein design based on a model wher e the contact energy between amino acid residues is fitted phenomenolo gically using the Miyazawa-Jernigan matrix. Due to the simple form of the contact energy function, an analytical prescription is found which allows us to design energetically stable sequences for fixed amino ac id residue compositions and target structures. The theoretically obtai ned sequences are compared with real proteins, and good correspondence is obtained. Finally, we discuss the effect of discrepancies in the p rocedure used to fit the contact energy on our theoretical predictions .