Scrutinizing the squeezed exponential kinetics observed in the folding simulation of an off-lattice Go-like protein model

We investigated whether the squeezed exponential kinetics, which was found in the previous Monte Carlo simulation of a lattice Go model for protein folding, can be observed as well in the molecular dynamics simulation (MD) of an off-lattice Go-like model. It was shown that the squeezed-exponential-type folding kinetics is indeed observed in the off-lattice Go-like model. Then, the effects of the native structure topology, the initial condition of the folding reaction, the employed observable to monitor folding reaction, and the time resolution of the kinetics data, on the observed squeezed exponential kinetics were investigated. The analysis of the time-resolution effect showed that the squeezed exponential kinetics can be attributed to the characteristics of the early stage of folding kinetics, suggesting that the squeezed exponential kinetics is most likely to be observed in experiment which focuses on the early stage of folding kinetics.