In physics and biochemistry, an energy landscape is a mapping of all possible conformations of a molecular entity, or the spatial positions of interacting molecules in a system, and their corresponding energy levels, typically Gibbs free energy, on a two- or three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system.
The term is useful when examining protein folding; while a protein can theoretically exist in a nearly infinite number of conformations along its energy landscape, in reality proteins fold (or "relax") into secondary and tertiary structures that possess the lowest possible free energy. The key concept in the energy landscape approach to protein folding is the folding funnel hypothesis.
In glassing models, the local minima of an energy landscape correspond to metastable low temperature states of a thermodynamic system.
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Famous quotes containing the words energy and/or landscape:
“The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul where is the substance?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)