About the Authors

Kay Hamacher

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: hamacher_at_ctbp.ucsd .edu

Affiliations Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America , Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Joanna Trylska

Affiliations Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America , Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America , Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling, Warsaw University, Warsaw, Poland

J. Andrew McCammon

Affiliations Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America , Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America , Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Pharmacology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

KH, JT, and JAM formulated the project. KH wrote the software, performed all the computations, and performed the sensitivity analysis. KH and JT analyzed the results. JT prepared the 30S subunit structure for computations and designed the computational validation experiments. KH, JT, and JAM wrote the paper.