Prediction of the occurrence of the ADP-binding βαβ-fold in proteins, using an amino acid sequence fingerprint

An amino acid sequence "fingerprint” has been derived that can be used to test if a particular sequence will fold into a βαβ-unit with ADP-binding properties. It was deduced from a careful analysis of the known three-dimensional structures of ADP-binding βαβ-folds. This fingerprint is in fact a set of 11 rules describing the type of amino acid that should occur at a specific position in a peptide fragment. The total length of this fingerprint varies between 29 and 31 residues. By checking against all possible sequences in a database, it appeared that every peptide, which exactly follows this fingerprint, does indeed fold into an ADP-binding βαβ-unit