A PREDICTED CONSENSUS STRUCTURE FOR THE C-TERMINUS OF THE BETA-CHAIN AND GAMMA-CHAIN OF FIBRINOGEN

A secondary structure has been predicted for the C termini of the fibr inogen beta and gamma chains from an aligned set of homologous protein sequences using a transparent method that extracts conformational inf ormation from patters of variation and conservation, parsing strings, and patterns of amphiphilicity. The structure is modeled to form two d omains, the first having a core parallel sheet flanked on one side by at least two helices and on the other by an antiparallel amphiphilic s heet, with an additional helix connecting the two sheets. The second d omain is built entirely from beta strands. (C) 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.