Vibrational dynamics and thermodynamics, ideal glass transitions and folding transitions, in liquids and biopolymers

We use recent studies on hyperquenched glasses, both laboratory and computer simulated, to demonstrate that boson peak vibrations become more intense with increasing fictive temperature, and that this forces a revision of the standard textbook rendering of glass transition thermodynamics. The correct depiction depends on the thermodynamic condition, constant volume or pressure. The absence of a boson peak in glassy water, along with other dynamic and thermodynamic data, is used to argue that water yields the most ordered (near-ideal) glass, due to cooperativity. The similarity of events in this transition, to the folding of proteins into the native form, is emphasized by "funnel" diagrams, in which diversion to fibril states of proteins is seen as the analog of cubic ice formation from deeply supercooled water. A method of studying the energetic details of protein folding, using a special solvent to suppress ice formation and aggregation, is described.