de Gennes Narrowing Describes the Relative Motion of Protein Domains

The relative motion of structural domains is essential for the biological function of many proteins. Here, by analyzing neutron scattering data and performing molecular dynamics simulations, we find that interdomain motion in several proteins obeys the principle of de Gennes narrowing, in which the wave vector dependence of the interdomain diffusion coefficient is inversely proportional to the interdomain structure factor. Thus, the rate of interdomain motion is inversely proportional to the probability distribution of the spatial configurations of domains.