Both attractive forces and repulsive forces are included in van der Waals interactions.
The attractive forces are due primarily to instantaneous dipole-induced dipole interactions
that arise because of fluctuations in the electron charge distributions of adjacent
nonbonded atoms. Individual van der Waals interactions are weak ones (with stabilization
energies of 0.4 to 4.0 kJ/mol), but many such interactions occur in a typical protein,
and by sheer force of numbers, they can represent a significant contribution to the stability
of a protein.
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