THE REVERSE TURN AS A TEMPLATE FOR METAL COORDINATION

The structural consequence of zinc binding to three octapeptides is examined. The experimental results indicate that placement of a constrained reverse turn motif in the core of the peptide nucleates the peptide secondary structure to facilitate metal coordination to ligands within the remainder of the sequence. These studies demonstrate that secondary structure in a polypeptide framework may be enhanced by a combination of beta-turn nucleation and metal coordination.