Protein loop patterns

The basic structural unit of these two-sheet p helix structures contains 18 amino acids, three in each p strand and six in each loop. A specific amino acid sequence pattern identifies this unit namely a double repeat of a nine-residue consensus sequence Gly-Gly-X-Gly-X-Asp-X-U-X where X is any amino acid and U is large, hydrophobic and frequently leucine. The first six residues form the loop and the last three form a p strand with the side chain of U involved in the hydrophobic packing of the two p sheets. The loops are stabilized by calcium ions which bind to the Asp residue (Figure S.28). This sequence pattern can be used to search for possible two-sheet p structures in databases of amino acid sequences of proteins of unknown structure. 

Because protein ROA spectra contain bands characteristic of loops and turns in addition to bands characteristic of secondary structure, they should provide information on the overall three-dimensional solution structure. We are developing a pattern recognition program, based on principal component analysis (PCA), to identify protein folds from ROA spectral band patterns (Blanch etal., 2002b). The method is similar to one developed for the determination of the structure of proteins from VCD (Pancoska etal., 1991) and UVCD (Venyaminov and Yang, 1996) spectra, but is expected to provide enhanced discrimination between different structural types since protein ROA spectra contain many more structure-sensitive bands than do either VCD or UVCD. From the ROA spectral data, the PCA program calculates a set of subspectra that serve as basis functions, the algebraic combination of which with appropriate expansion coefficients can be used to reconstruct any member of the... 

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