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proline ramachandran plot

by Shaina Quigley Published 4 years ago Updated 2 years ago

The proline Ramachandran plot is severely restricted by the pyrrolidine ring, where the flexibility in the pyrrolidine ring couples to the backbone [14]. The observed glycine Ramachandran plot has a distinctive distribution (Figure ​1A) quite different to the generic Ramachandran plot.

Where is proline in Ramachandran plot?

Proline has restrictions in phi-psi space that arise from the 5-membered ring. Phi is restricted to approxamatly -60 by the ring and psi angles fall into two groupings near -45 and +135 in the helical and sheet regions of the Ramachandran plot.

Why proline is exceptions in Ramachandran plot?

Its van der Waals radius is smaller and is thus less restricted. Proline, on the other hand has a 5-membered ring as a side chain. Therefore it is much more restricted than the other amino acids and allows for only a limited number of ψ and φ.

What does Ramachandran plot tell you?

The Ramachandran plot shows the statistical distribution of the combinations of the backbone dihedral angles ϕ and ψ. In theory, the allowed regions of the Ramachandran plot show which values of the Phi/Psi angles are possible for an amino acid, X, in a ala-X-ala tripeptide (Ramachandran et al., 1963).

Why is proline a helix breaker?

Proline also destabilizes α-helices because of its irregular geometry; its R-group bonds back to the nitrogen of the amide group, which causes steric hindrance. In addition, the lack of a hydrogen on Proline's nitrogen prevents it from participating in hydrogen bonding.

Why is proline rarely found in alpha helices?

When proline is in a peptide bond, it does not have a hydrogen on the α amino group, so it cannot donate a hydrogen bond to stabilize an α helix or a β sheet. It is often said, inaccurately, that proline cannot exist in an α helix.

What is the role of proline in secondary structure?

In one simplified view, proline disrupts protein secondary structure by inhibiting the backbone to conform to an alpha-helix or beta-sheet conformation.

Why are glycine and proline found in turns?

Proline and glycine residues are statistically preferred at several β-turn positions, presumably because their unique side chains contribute favorably to conformational stability in certain β-turn positions.

Which is the first quadrant in Ramachandran plot?

The Ramachandran Plot helps with determination of secondary structures of proteins. Quadrant I shows a region where some conformations are allowed. This is where rare left-handed alpha helices lie.

Which of the following amino acids is an exception to the Ramachandran plot?

11. Which of the following amino acids is an exception to the Ramachandran plot? Explanation: Glycine and proline are an exception to the Ramachandran plot. Glycine is a very simple amino acid because it contains hydrogen atom as its R group.

What is special about proline?

Proline is unique in that it is the only amino acid where the side chain is connected to the protein backbone twice, forming a five-membered nitrogen-containing ring.

Does proline break helix?

Proline is established as a potent breaker of both alpha-helical and beta-sheet structures in soluble (globular) proteins. Thus, the frequent occurrence of the Pro residue in the putative transmembrane helices of integral membrane proteins, particularly transport proteins, presents a structural dilemma.

What is the angle of a Ramachandran plot?

All three angles are at 180° in the conformation shown. In biochemistry, a Ramachandran plot (also known as a Rama plot, a Ramachandran diagram or a [φ,ψ] plot ), originally developed in 1963 by G. N. Ramachandran, C. Ramakrishnan, and V. Sasisekharan, is a way to visualize energetically allowed regions for backbone dihedral angles ψ against φ ...

When was the Ramachandran plot first calculated?

The first Ramachandran plot was calculated just after the first protein structure at atomic resolution was determined ( myoglobin, in 1960 ), although the conclusions were based on small-molecule crystallography of short peptides.

What is Ramachandran plot?

The Ramachandran plot visualizes energetically allowed and forbidden regions for the dihedral angles. For poor quality homology models, many dihedral angles are found in the forbidden regions of the Ramachandran plot. Such deviations usually indicate problems with the structure.

What is the validation process of a protein model?

The validation process includes manual inspection of the protein model to ensure that the model supports any experimental data. This often entails superimposing the model with the template structures for comparison. Software such as the SUPERPOSE module of the CCP4 ( Collaborative Computational Project 1994) suite of crystallography programs, and Swiss-PDB Viewer perform structural alignments of the model with other similar structures, such as the templates. Commercial homology modelling programs often include their own model evaluation software i.e. ProTable in SYBYL (Clark et al. 1989). The quality of the superposition process is generally measured by a root mean square deviation (RMSD) value, which is the sum of the squared distance between each corresponding Cα atom position in the two structures following superposition. The core Cα atoms of protein models which share 35-50% sequence identity with their templates, will generally deviate by 1.0-1.5 Å from their experimental counter parts ( Chothia and Lesk 1986; Peitsch 2002). Manual inspection and manipulation of the model can be performed using molecular graphics software such as O (Jones et al 1999), Swiss-PDB Viewer ( Guex and Peitsch 1997) and Pymol ( DeLano 2002 ). Manual manipulation and visualisation are one of the most important steps to determine the accuracy of the model and to check if the model matches observed experimental data. This process may include altering side-chain rotamers to match a template structure or employing docking programs such as AUTODOCK ( Morris et al, 1998 ), ICM-Dock ( Abagyan et al. 1997) or GOLD ( Verdonk et al. 2003) to dock known substrates into the active site or known protein-binding molecules to the surface of the model.

What is the Ramachandran plot?

The Ramachandran plot. A special way for plotting protein torsion angles was introduced by Ramachandran and co-authors and since then is called the Ramachandran plot. The Ramachandran plot provides a way to view the distribution of torsion angles in a protein structure and shows that the torsion angles corresponding to the two major secondary ...

Does glycine have a side chain?

Gly does not have a side chain, which allows high flexibility in the polypeptide chain, making otherwise forbidden rotation angles accessible. That is why glycine is often found in loop regions, where the polypeptide chain needs to make a sharp turn.

What is the side chain of proline?

The side chain in proline is bound to the alpha carbon (this is the same as in all other amino acids), but also to the amine nitrogen. The cyclic structure of the proline side chain gives it a very strong conformational rigidity compared to other amino acids.

Is glycine a side chain?

Glycine – has no Beta carbon atom, i.e. no side chain. Therefore it is the least sterically hindered as compared to other amino acids. This fact permits it to cover a large range of area in the plot. Therefore, glycine residues polypeptide chain often assumes conformations that are forbidden to other residues.

Overview

More recent updates

The first Ramachandran plot was calculated just after the first protein structure at atomic resolution was determined (myoglobin, in 1960 ), although the conclusions were based on small-molecule crystallography of short peptides. Now, many decades later, there are tens of thousands of high-resolution protein structures determined by X-ray crystallography and deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). Many studies have taken advantage of this data to produce more detai…

Uses

A Ramachandran plot can be used in two somewhat different ways. One is to show in theory which values, or conformations, of the ψ and φ angles are possible for an amino-acid residue in a protein (as at top right). A second is to show the empirical distribution of datapoints observed in a single structure (as at right, here) in usage for structure validation, or else in a database of many structures (as in the lower 3 plots at left). Either case is usually shown against outlines for the th…

Amino-acid preferences

One might expect that larger side chains would result in more restrictions and consequently a smaller allowable region in the Ramachandran plot, but the effect of side chains is small. In practice, the major effect seen is that of the presence or absence of the methylene group at Cβ. Glycine has only a hydrogen atom for its side chain, with a much smaller van der Waals radius than the CH3, CH2, or CH group that starts the side chain of all other amino acids. Hence it is least re…

Related conventions

One can also plot the dihedral angles in polysaccharides (e.g. with CARP).

Gallery

• Ramachandran plot for the general case; data from Lovell 2003
• Ramachandran plot for Glycine
• Ramachandran plot for Proline
• Ramachandran plot for pre-Proline

Software

• Web-based Structural Analysis tool for any uploaded PDB file, producing Ramachandran plots, computing dihedral angles and extracting sequence from PDB
• Web-based tool showing Ramachandran plot of any PDB entry
• MolProbity web service that produces Ramachandran plots and other validation of any PDB-format file

Further reading

• Richardson, J.S. (1981). "The Anatomy and Taxonomy of Protein Structure". Anatomy and Taxonomy of Protein Structures. Advances in Protein Chemistry. Vol. 34. pp. 167–339. doi:10.1016/S0065-3233(08)60520-3. ISBN 9780120342341. PMID 7020376., available on-line at Anatax
• Branden, C.-I.; Tooze, J. (1991), Introduction to Protein Structure, Garland Publishing, NY, ISBN 0-8153-0344-0

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