Topic Page Multi-state Modeling of Biomolecules

Abstract: Multi-state modeling of biomolecules refers to a series of techniques used to represent and compute the behavior of biological molecules or complexes that can adopt a large number of possible functional states. Biological signaling systems often rely on complexes of biological macromolecules that can undergo several functionally significant modifications that are mutually compatible. Thus, they can exist in a very large number of functionally different states. Modeling such multi-state systems poses two problems: the problem of how to describe and specify a multi-state system (the ‘‘specifica-tion problem’’) and the problem of how to use a computer to simulate the progress of the system over time (the ‘‘computation problem’’). To address the specification problem, modelers have in recent year