Approach to studying the structure-activity relationship of native peptides. I. Structural organization of the opioid peptide Tyr-Glu-Gly-Phe-Met-Arg-Gly-Leu and its artificial analogs]

Theoretical conformational analysis was carried out for the octapeptide Tyr1-Gly2-Gly3-Phe4-Met5-Arg6-Gly7-Leu8. Possible structure of the opioid peptide under physiological conditions may be described by a set of low-energy conformations belonging to 14 different forms of the backbone. The solution of the "reverse conformational problem" for the opioid peptide enables one to predict the modified amino acid sequences (Ala2, D-Ala2, Ala3, D-Ala3, Ala7, D-Ala7, MeMet5, MeArg6-analogues) which may assume one of the low-energy states of the native hormone. The influence of the solute was not taken into account in our calculations.