Abstract
We developed a heuristic method for determining the ground-state degeneracy of hydrophobic-polar (HP) lattice proteins, based on Wang-Landau and multicanonical sampling. It is applied during comprehensive studies of single-site mutations in specifi c HP proteins with di fferent sequences. The eff ects in which we are interested include structural changes in ground-states, changes of ground-state energy, degeneracy, and thermodynamic properties of the system. With respect to mutations, both extremely sensitive and insensitive positions in the HP sequence have been found. That is, ground state energies and degeneracies, as well as other thermodynamic and structural quantities may be either largely una ffected or may change signi ficantly due to mutation.