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. 1980 Dec;77(12):6965–6967. doi: 10.1073/pnas.77.12.6965

Intermolecular anti-parallel β sheet: Comparison of predicted and observed conformations of gramicidin S

S Rackovsky 1,*, H A Scheraga 1,†
PMCID: PMC350420  PMID: 16592928

Abstract

A recently determined x-ray structure of the hydrated gramicidin S-urea complex is compared with a structure predicted by conformational energy minimization. It is shown that the two structures are in good general agreement, including the prediction of a hydrogen bond between the side-chain amino group of ornithine and the backbone carbonyl of phenylalanine. This agreement demonstrates the power of empirical potential energy methods in conformational analysis and illustrates one method for solution of the multiple-minimum problem for small peptides. It is noted that, in the crystal, gramicidin S is a dimer that forms an intermolecular antiparallel four-stranded β sheet and that differences between the predicted and x-ray structures can be explained by this intermolecular interaction. The residual conformational asymmetry of the x-ray structure is shown to be due to the formation of the complex with urea.

Keywords: conformational analysis, oligopeptide structure, differential-geometric comparison, dimerization, β structure

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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