A New Monte Carlo Algorithm for Protein Folding

Helge Frauenkron, Ugo Bastolla, Erwin Gerstner, Peter Grassberger, Walter Nadler

Published 1997-05-15, updated 1998-01-08Version 2

We demonstrate that the recently proposed pruned-enriched Rosenbluth method (P. Grassberger, Phys. Rev. E 56 (1997) 3682) leads to extremely efficient algorithms for the folding of simple model proteins. We test them on several models for lattice heteropolymers, and compare to published Monte Carlo studies. In all cases our algorithms are faster than all previous ones, and in several cases we find new minimal energy states. In addition to ground states, our algorithms give estimates for the partition sum at finite temperatures.