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Protein Science : A Publication of the Protein Society logoLink to Protein Science : A Publication of the Protein Society
. 2000 Oct;9(10):1935–1946.

Constraint-based assembly of tertiary protein structures from secondary structure elements.

K Yue 1, K A Dill 1
PMCID: PMC2144474  PMID: 11106167

Abstract

A challenge in computational protein folding is to assemble secondary structure elements-helices and strands-into well-packed tertiary structures. Particularly difficult is the formation of beta-sheets from strands, because they involve large conformational searches at the same time as precise packing and hydrogen bonding. Here we describe a method, called Geocore-2, that (1) grows chains one monomer or secondary structure at a time, then (2) disconnects the loops and performs a fast rigid-body docking step to achieve canonical packings, then (3) in the case of intrasheet strand packing, adjusts the side-chain rotamers; and finally (4) reattaches loops. Computational efficiency is enhanced by using a branch-and-bound search in which pruning rules aim to achieve a hydrophobic core and satisfactory hydrogen bonding patterns. We show that the pruning rules reduce computational time by 10(3)- to 10(5)-fold, and that this strategy is computationally practical at least for molecules up to about 100 amino acids long.

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Selected References

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