Cooperative folding kinetics of BBL protein and peripheral subunit-binding domain homologues

Recent experiments claiming that Naf-BBL protein follows a global downhill folding raised an important controversy as to the folding mechanism of fast-folding proteins. Under the global downhill folding scenario, not only do proteins undergo a gradual folding, but folding events along the continuous folding pathway also could be mapped out from the equilibrium denaturation experiment. Based on the exact calculation using a free energy landscape, relaxation eigenmodes from a master equation, and Monte Carlo simulation of an extended Muñoz–Eaton model that incorporates multiscale-heterogeneous pairwise interactions between amino acids, here we show that the very nature of a two-state cooperative transition such as a bimodal distribution from an exact free energy landscape and biphasic relaxation kinetics manifest in the thermodynamics and folding–unfolding kinetics of BBL and peripheral subunit-binding domain homologues. Our results provide an unequivocal resolution to the fundamental controversy related to the global downhill folding scheme, whose applicability to other proteins should be critically reexamined.