Statistical potential

In protein structure prediction, a statistical potential or knowledge-based potential is an energy function derived from an analysis of known protein structures in the Protein Data Bank.

Many methods exist to obtain such potentials; two notable methods are the quasi-chemical approximation (due to Miyazawa and Jernigan) and the potential of mean force (due to Sippl ). Although the obtained energies are often considered as approximations of the free energy, this physical interpretation is incorrect. Nonetheless, they have been applied with a limited success in many cases because they frequently correlate with actual (physical) free energy differences.