  By observing trends in the folding kinetics of experimental 2-state proteins
at their transition midpoints, and by observing trends in the barrier heights
of numerous simulations of coarse grained, C-alpha model, Go proteins, we show
that folding rates correlate with the degree of heterogeneity in the formation
of native contacts. Statistically significant correlations are observed between
folding rates and measures of heterogeneity inherent in the native topology, as
well as between rates and the variance in the distribution of either
experimentally measured or simulated phi-values.
