Statistics of Kinetic Pathways on Biased Rough Energy Landscapes with Applications to Protein Folding

Abstract

Using path integrals, the statistics of kinetic pathways on a biased random energy landscape can be mapped on to the statistical mechanics of the random directed polymer. Using this, we make explicit the role of time scales in defining a protein folding pathway and the connections between thermodynamic glass transitions of the protein and the emergence of discrete kinetic pathways for folding.