New Monte Carlo algorithm for protein folding

We demonstrate that the recently introduced pruned-enriched Rosenbluth method leads to extremely efficient algorithms for the folding of simple model proteins. We test them on several models for lattice heteropolymers, and compare the results to published Monte Carlo studies. In all cases our algorithms an faster than previous ones, and in several cases we find new minimal energy states. In addition, our algorithms give estimates for the partition sum at finite temperatures.