Scaling of radius of protein (Rn) with number of amino acids in the protein (N)

Range Rn(N)=2.24N^0.392
Organism Generic
Reference Dill KA, Ghosh K, Schmit JD. Physical limits of cells and proteomes. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Nov 1 108(44):17876-82 p.17878 right column equation 10PubMed ID22006304
Comments If native proteins were perfect spheres, their radii, Rn, should scale with chain length N as Rn(N)˜N^(1/3) (refs 48-50). However, recent studies of the Protein Data Bank show instead a scaling approximately with N^(2/5) (ref 51) based on an analysis of 37,000 protein structures, where N is the number of amino acids in the protein and Rn is given in angstroms.
Entered by Uri M
ID 107051