Chiral effects on helicity studied via the energy landscape of short (d, l)-alanine peptides

Sridhar Neelamraju*, Mark T. Oakley, Roy L. Johnston

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)
279 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The homochirality of natural amino acids facilitates the formation of regular secondary structures such as α-helices and β-sheets. Here, we study the relationship between chirality and backbone structure for the example of hexa-alanine. The most stable stereoisomers are identified through global optimisation. Further, the energy landscape, a database of connected low-energy local minima and transition points, is constructed for various neutral and zwitterionic stereoisomers of hexa-alanine. Three order parameters for partial helicity are applied and metric disconnectivity graphs are presented with partial helicity as a metric. We also apply the Zimm-Bragg model to derive average partial helicities for Ace-(l-Ala)6-NHMe, Ace-(d-Ala-l-Ala)3-NHMe, and Ace-(l-Ala)3-(d-Ala)3-NHMe from the database of local minima and compare with previous studies.

Original languageEnglish
Article number165103
JournalJournal of Chemical Physics
Volume143
Issue number16
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Physics and Astronomy
  • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

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