Conformational features of carrabiose polymers: I. Configurational statistics of κ-carrageenan

• Published in: International journal of biological macromolecules Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 24 - 29
• Main Authors: Urbani, Ranieri, Di Blas, Antonio, Cesàro, Attilio
• Format: Journal Article Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.02.1993; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Carbohydrate Conformation; Carbohydrate Sequence; carrabiose; Carrageenan - chemistry; Computer Simulation; configurational statistics; conformation; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Molecular biophysics; Molecular Sequence Data; neocarrabiose; Oligosaccharides - chemistry; Structure in molecular biology; Tridimensional structure; κ-carrageenan; configurational statistics; carrabiose; conformation; neocarrabiose; κ-carrageenan; Molecular flexibility; Carrageenan; Calculating method; Conformation
• ISSN: 0141-8130; 1879-0003
• DOI: 10.1016/S0141-8130(05)80084-4

Potential energy functions evaluating both repulsive-attractive van der Waals non-bonding interactions and electrostatic interactions have been used to evaluate the conformational energies of the repeating units of the κ-carrageenan polymers. Structural parameters have been obtained by minimization MNDO procedures (MOPAC). Energy maps have been calculated for the (1–3)α- d-galactose-4-sulphate (GS) and the (1–4)-3,6-anhydro-α- d-galactose (A) residues, taking into account the conformational freedom of the sulphate group. The configurational statistics of the random coiled κ-carageenan chain have been explored, disclosing a highly flexible character, which can mainly be ascribed to the random occurrence of two different conformers of the GS-A dimeric unit.