  We perform extensive coarse-grained (CG) Langevin dynamics simulations of
intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), which possess fluctuating
conformational statistics between that for excluded volume random walks and
collapsed globules. Our CG model includes repulsive steric, attractive
hydrophobic, and electrostatic interactions between residues and is calibrated
to a large collection of single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer
data on the inter-residue separations for 36 pairs of residues in five IDPs:
$\alpha$-, $\beta$-, and $\gamma$-synuclein, the microtubule-associated protein
$\tau$, and prothymosin $\alpha$. We find that our CG model is able to
recapitulate the average inter-residue separations regardless of the choice of
the hydrophobicity scale, which shows that our calibrated model can robustly
capture the conformational dynamics of IDPs. We then employ our model to study
the scaling of the radius of gyration with chemical distance in 11 known IDPs.
We identify a strong correlation between the distance to the dividing line
between folded proteins and IDPs in the mean charge and hydrophobicity space
and the scaling exponent of the radius of gyration with chemical distance along
the protein.
