Small Peptides with a β-Hairpin Structure

Abstract

In recent years, b-hairpin peptides have been studied in detail. b-Turns are the most
common element of non-repetitive structure recognized in proteins.1 They consist of supersecondary
structural elements in which two antiparallel adjacent peptide b-sheets are linked by a
short loop. The loop size can vary; the majority of b-hairpins have loops of two to six residues,2
the most common loop size being two. Their dihedral angles (Table 1) are used to classify them.3