Descriptive statistics of disallowed regions and various protein secondary structures in the context of studying twisted β-hairpins

Abstract

A detailed analysis of polypeptide-chain backbone conformations was carried out for polypeptide-chain segments adjacent to β-turn regions, including the sites of disallowed conformations. A cross comparison of conformations was performed for disallowed regions of the Ramachandran plot and main types of β-turns and adjacent secondary structures. Based on the results, disallowed region 2 (II, II') in the Ramachandran plot was shown to coincide mainly with β-hairpins and, more exactly, twisted β-hairpins. The frequency of residues with angles ϕ_i, ψ_i that fall in region 2 (II, II') in the latter is 140 times higher than in common β-hairpins.