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Reaction coordinates are widely used throughout chemical physics to model and understand complex chemical transformations. We introduce a definition of the natural reaction coordinate, suitable for condensed phase and biomolecular systems, as a maximally predictive one-dimensional projection. We then show that this criterion is uniquely satisfied by a dominant…

Markov state models (MSMs) are a powerful framework for analyzing protein dynamics. MSMs require the decomposition of conformation space into states via clustering, which can be cross-validated when a prediction method is available for the clustering method. We present an algorithm for predicting cluster assignments of new data points with Ward’s minimum varia…

The dynamics of globular proteins can be described in terms of transitions between a folded native state and less-populated intermediates, or excited states, which can play critical roles in both protein folding and function. Excited states are by definition transient species, and therefore are difficult to characterize using current experimental techniques. H…

Beta-hairpins are substructures found in proteins that can lend insight into more complex systems. Furthermore, the folding of beta-hairpins is a valuable test case for benchmarking experimental and theoretical methods. Here, we simulate the folding of CLN025, a miniprotein with a beta-hairpin structure, at its experimental melting temperature using a range of…

Markov state models (MSMs) are a powerful framework for the analysis of molecular dynamics data sets, such as protein folding simulations, because of their straightforward construction and statistical rigor. The coarse-graining of MSMs into an interpretable number of macrostates is a crucial step for connecting theoretical results with experimental observables…

Markov state models (MSMs) are a powerful framework for analyzing dynamical systems, such as molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, that have gained widespread use over the past several decades. This perspective offers an overview of the MSM field to date, presented for a general audience as a timeline of key developments in the field. We sequentially address ea…

We use reinforcement learning to train an agent for computational RNA design: given a target secondary structure, design a sequence that folds to that structure in silico. Our agent uses a novel graph convolutional architecture allowing a single model to be applied to arbitrary target structures of any length. After training it on randomly generated targets, w…

Often the analysis of time-dependent chemical and biophysical systems produces high-dimensional time-series data for which it can be difficult to interpret which individual features are most salient. While recent work from our group and others has demonstrated the utility of time-lagged covariate models to study such systems, linearity assumptions can limit th…