A statistical analysis of the PPII propensity of amino acid guests in proline-rich peptides

There has been considerable debate about the intrinsic PPII propensity of amino-acid residues in denatured polypeptides. Experimentally, the propensity scale is based on the behavior of guest amino-acid residues placed in the middle of polyproline hosts. We have used classical molecular dynamics simulations, with state-of-the-art force fields to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the conformational equilibria of the proline-based host oligopeptides with single guests. The tracked structural characteristics include the PPII content, the cis/trans isomerization of the prolyl bonds, the puckering of the pyrrolidine rings of the proline residues, and the secondary structural motifs. We find no evidence for an intrinsic PPII propensity in any of the guest amino acids other than proline. Instead, the PPII content as derived from experiments may be explained in terms of: 1), a local correlation between the dihedral angles of the guest amino acid and the proline residue immediately preceding it; and 2), a nonlocal correlation between the cis/trans states of the peptide bonds. In terms of the latter, we find that the presence of a guest (other than proline, tyrosine, or tryptophan) increases the trans content of most of the prolyl bonds, which results in an effective increase of the peptide PPII content. With respect to the local dihedral correlations, we find that these are well described in terms of the so-called odds-ratio statistic. Expressed in terms of free energy language, the PPII content based on the odds-ratio of the relevant residues correlate well with the experimentally measured PPII content.