Stability Threshold as a Selection Principle for Protein Design

The sensitivity of the native states of protein-like heteropolymers to mutations modelled as perturbations in the interaction potential between amino acids is studied. The stability threshold against mutations is shown to be zero for random heteropolymers on a lattice in two dimensions, whereas a design procedure modelling evolution produces a non-zero threshold. We introduce an evolution-like protein design procedure based on an optimization of the stability threshold that is shown to naturally ensure thermodynamic stability as well.