The respective roles of polar/nonpolar binary patterns and amino acid composition in protein regular secondary structures explored exhaustively using hydrophobic cluster analysis

Several studies have highlighted the leading role of the sequence periodicity of polar and nonpolar amino acids (binary patterns) in the formation of regular secondary structures (RSS). However, these were based on the analysis of only a few simple cases, with no direct mean to correlate binary patterns with the limits of RSS. Here, HCA-derived hydrophobic clusters (HC) which are conditioned binary patterns whose positions fit well those of RSS, were considered. All the HC types, defined by unique binary patterns, which were commonly observed in three-dimensional (3D) structures of globular domains, were analyzed. The 180 HC types with preferences for either α-helices or β-strands distinctly contain basic binary units typical of these RSS. Therefore a general trend supporting the "binary pattern preference" assumption was observed. HC for which observed RSS are in disagreement with their expected behavior (discordant HC) were also examined. They were separated in HC types with moderate preferences for RSS, having "weak" binary patterns and versatile RSS and HC types with high preferences for RSS, having "strong" binary patterns and then displaying nonpolar amino acids at the protein surface. It was shown that in both cases, discordant HC could be distinguished from concordant ones by well-differentiated amino acid compositions. The obtained results could, thus, help to complement the currently available methods for the accurate prediction of secondary structures in proteins from the only information of a single amino acid sequence. This can be especially useful for characterizing orphan sequences and for assisting protein engineering and design.