The use of folding patterns in a multisolution approach of the all-beta protein three-dimensional structure. A beta-roll structure is predicted in the retroviral glycoprotein.

An automatic macromolecular modelling package of unknown protein structures was developed using the intimate correlation which appears between the observed X-ray structures and their associated predicted folding patterns. The method can be considered as a generalization of both the combinatorial [1] and the template identification [2,3] approaches which were proposed some years ago, and provide a fast way of selecting 'structural motifs' to build new proteins. As an illustration, the tertiary fold of the all-beta-domain of the retroviral outermembrane glycoprotein is proposed.