Global minimum solvation structure

The most ambitious approaches to the protein folding problem attempt to solve it from firs principles (ab initio). As such, the problem is to explore the coirformational space of th molecule in order to identify the most appropriate structure. The total number of possibl conformations is invariably very large and so it is usual to try to find only the very lowes energy structure(s). Some form of empirical force field is usually used, often augmente with a solvation term (see Section 11.12). The global minimum in the energy function i assumed to correspond to the naturally occurring structure of the molecule. 

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