title: Quasi-periodic primary structures of core proteins of human T-lymphotropic leukemia retroviruses.
abstract: Fourier analysis, previously introduced by Liquori et al. (1983, 1986), has been applied to the primary structures of two core proteins of human T-lymphotropic leukemia retroviruses HTLV-I and HTLV-II. The resulting autocorrelation functions display striking patterns that can be interpreted in terms of an approximately fourfold quasi-periodicity of the primary structures. Self-alignments of the amino acid sequences containing a few gaps are consistent with the above finding and suggest that the tertiary structure of these two homologous core proteins contains alpha-helical and delta-helical segments, the latter being characteristic of the threefold helix present in collagen structure.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Chimiche, II Università di Roma, Italy.
authors.forename: A M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Liquori
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sadun
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Battisti
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D017977:Deltaretrovirus / Q000235:genetics*; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011487:Protein Conformation; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D013045:Species Specificity; D014758:Viral Core Proteins / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D014758:Viral Core Proteins