Characterizing metastable states: From glassy liquids to protein (mis)folding
Dr. Robert Jack (University of Bath, UK)

The presence of metastable states is often assumed when describing or modelling "glassy" systems, but precise identification of these states is difficult in general. For glass-­‐forming liquids, recent progress has been made by considering biased ensembles of trajectories in a large deviation formalism, which leads to unusual dynamical phase transitions [1]. At the same time, in the protein-­‐folding community, automated construction of Markov State Models provides a method for characterisation of the folding dynamics of protein molecules. We will discuss how biased ensembles of trajectories are also useful in analysing the resulting models and identifying potentially important misfolded states [2,3].

[1] LO Hedges, RL Jack, JP Garrahan and D Chandler, Science 323, 1309 (2009).

[2] JK Weber, RL Jack and VS Pande, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 135, 5501 (2013).

[3] JK Weber, RL Jack, CR Schwantes and VS Pande, Biophys J. 107, 974 (2014).