The sCIENCE AT ARIEL FERNANDEZ consultancy 

At Ariel Fernandez Consultancy we are fortunate to have played a decisive role in major scientific breakthroughs in a number of fields, ranging from statistical mechanics to drug discovery. To name but a few, we should mention:

a. An ab initio solution to the protein folding problem

A definite solution is offered in:

Ariel Fernandez (2013) The principle of minimal episteric distortion of the water matrix and its steering role in protein folding. Journal of Chemical Physics 139, 085101 

The groundwork for this breakthrough entailed the discovery of "metadynamics" first discussed in the paper:

Ariel Fernandez (1999) Folding a protein by discretizing its backbone torsional dynamics. Physical Review E 59, 5928,

as well as the realization that folding cooperativity needed to be understood as a many-body problem concerning the wrapping of electrostatic interactions, as first shown in:

Ariel Fernandez (2001) Conformation-dependent environments in folding proteins. Journal of Chemical Physics 114, 2489-2502

b. Competitive disruption of protein-protein associations

The theory is presented in:

Ariel Fernandez (2012) Epistructural tension promotes protein associations. Physical Review Letters 108, 188102 

An actual therapeutic application is given in:

​Richard L. Moss and Ariel Fernandez (2014) Inhibition of MYBP-C binding to myosin as a treatment for heart failure. Patent application US20130345135 (patent pending)

c. The nonadaptive origin of human complexity

Ariel Fernandez and Michael Lynch (2011) The nonadaptive origins of interactome complexity. Nature 474, 502-505 

d. The discovery of the dehydron and its impact in drug design

The discovery is first reported in: 

Ariel Fernandez and Ridgway Scott (2003) Adherence of packing defects in soluble proteins.

Physical Review Letters 91, 018102

and in:

Ariel Fernandez and Harold A. Scheraga (2003) Insufficiently dehydrated hydrogen bonds as determinants for protein associations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 100, 113-118

The first application of the dehydron concept to drug design is reported in:

Ariel Fernandez, Kristina Rogale, Ridgway Scott and Harold A. Scheraga (2004) Inhibitor design by wrapping packing defects in HIV-1 proteins. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 101, 11640-11645 

Another biotechnological application of the dehydron concept is reported in: 

Ariel Fernandez (2004) Keeping dry and crossing membranes. Nature Biotechnology 22, 1081-1084 

​e. The molecular basis for drug specificity

This breakthrough is first reported in:

Jianping Chen, Xi Zhang and Ariel Fernandez (2007) Molecular basis of specificity in the druggable kinome. Bioinformatics 23, 563-572 

f.  The theory of  self organization in nonequilibrium thermodynamics

The first consistent and cogent theory of self organization in nonequilibrium thermodynamics is presented in:

Ariel Fernandez (1988) Self organization in the center manifold of dissipative systems. Journal of Physics A 21/Letters, L295

g. The dehydron is a key player in enzyme catalysis

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​​​ARIEL FERNAN​DEZ​ 

biotechnology and Pharmaceutics INNOVATION