Nonextensive Statistical Mechanics Application to Vibrational Dynamics of Protein Folding

TL;DR

This paper applies nonextensive Tsallis statistics to analyze protein folding vibrational dynamics, revealing how the nonextensive parameter influences thermodynamic quantities and aligning with Gaussian network models as q approaches 1.

Contribution

It introduces a nonextensive statistical framework to model protein vibrational dynamics, extending traditional approaches with the parameter q.

Findings

Temperature factor depends on the nonextensive parameter q.

As q approaches 1, results converge with Gaussian network model.

Generalized thermodynamic functions are derived within the Tsallis framework.

Abstract

The vibrational dynamics of protein folding is analyzed in the framework of Tsallis thermostatistics. The generalized partition functions, internal energies, free energies and temperature factor (or Debye-Waller factor) are calculated. It has also been observed that the temperature factor is dependent on the non-extensive parameter q which behaves like a scale parameter in the harmonic oscillator model. As $q\to 1$, we also show that these approximations agree with the result of Gaussian network model.