Residue-specific structure and dynamics of water around the insect antifreeze protein, DAFP-1: a molecular dynamics study

Abstract

Antifreeze proteins are a class of proteins across various species that exhibit thermal hysteresis. The mechanisms by which these proteins prevent freezing without altering the melting point has yet to be fully characterized and understood. DAFP-1 is a hyperactive antifreeze protein present in the beetle, Dendroides canadensis and is modelled using the Amber99 force field. We present residue specific methods of analysis to isolate amino acids in the hypothesized ice binding face and the non binding face.