Detecting repetitions and periodicities in proteins by tiling the structural space

PARRA RG; ESPADA R; SÁNCHEZ IE; SIPPL MJ; FERREIRO DU

Congreso; 2014 Gordon Conference; 2014

Energy Landscape Theory indicates that it is much easier to find sequences that satisfy the ?Principle of Minimal Frustration?' when the folded structure is symmetric. Similarly, repeats and structural mosaics may be fundamentally related to landscapes with multiple embedded funnels. Here we present analytical tools to detect and compare structural repetitions in protein molecules. By an exhaustive analysis of the distribution of structural repeats using a robust metric we define those portions of a protein molecule that best describe the overall structure as a tessellation of basic units. The patterns produced by such tessellations provide intuitive representations of the repeating regions and their association to higher order patterns.