In the mid-20th century, two new scientific disciplines emerged forcefully: molecular biology and information-communication theory. At the beginning, cross-fertilization was so deep that the term genetic code was universally accepted for describing the meaning of triplets of mRNA (codons) as amino acids. However, today, such synergy has not taken advantage of the vertiginous advances in the two disciplines and presents more challenges than answers. These challenges not only are of great theoretical relevance but also represent unavoidable milestones for next-generation biology: from personalized genetic therapy and diagnosis to Artificial Life to the production of biologically active proteins. Moreover, the matter is intimately connected to a paradigm shift needed in theoretical biology, pioneered a long time ago, that requires combined contributions from disciplines well beyond the biological realm. The use of information as a conceptual metaphor needs to be turned into quantitative and predictive models that can be tested empirically and integrated in a unified view. Successfully achieving these tasks requires a wide multidisciplinary approach, including Artificial Life researchers, to address such an endeavour.

Motivation: Polypeptide sequence length is the single dominant factor hampering the effectiveness of currently available software tools for de novo calculation of amino acid-specific protonation constants in disordered polypeptides. Results: We have developed pepKalc, a robust simulation software for the comprehensive evaluation of protein electrostatics in unfolded states. Our software completely removes the limitations of the previously reported Monte-Carlo approaches in the computation of protein electrostatics by using a hybrid approach that effectively combines exact and mean-field calculations to rapidly obtain accurate results. Paired with a modern architecture GPU, pepKalc is capable of evaluating protonation behavior for an arbitrary-size polypeptide in a sub-second time regime. Availability and implementation: http://protein-nmr.org and https://github.com/PeptoneInc/pepkalc.

UNLABELLED: We describe here the ncIDP-assign extension for the popular NMR assignment program SPARKY, which aids in the sequence-specific resonance assignment of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). The assignment plugin greatly facilitates the effective matching of a set of connected resonances to the correct position in the sequence by making use of IDP random coil chemical shifts. AVAILABILITY: The ncIDP-assign extension is available at http://www.protein-nmr.org/.