The pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease is characterized by the aggregation and fibrillation of amyloid peptides Aβ(1-40) and Aβ(1-42) into amyloid plaques. Despite strong potential therapeutic interest, the structural pathways associated with the conversion of monomeric Aβ peptides into oligomeric species remain largely unknown. In particular, the higher aggregation propensity and associated t...

The commentaries by Shanon (2003) and Pribram (2003) on our original article (Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001) are stimulating and make a valuable contribution to the knowledge and thinking about synaesthesia, and indeed the mind in general. We were gratified to see the overall level of agreement with our general framework. For example, both of the authors endorse our connection between the percep...

Intrinsically disordered regions are predicted to exist in a significant fraction of proteins encoded in eukaryotic genomes. The high levels of conformational plasticity of this class of proteins endows them with unique capacities to act in functional modes not achievable by folded proteins, but also places their molecular characterization beyond the reach of classical structural biology. New t...

The conformations available to polypeptides are determined by the interatomic forces acting on the peptide units, whereby backbone torsion angles are restricted as described by the Ramachandran plot. Although typical proteins are composed predominantly from α-helices and β-sheets, they nevertheless adopt diverse tertiary structure, each folded as dictated by its unique amino-acid sequence. Desp...

The commentaries by Shanon (2003) and Pribram (2003) on our original article (Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001) are stimulating and make a valuable contribution to the knowledge and thinking about synaesthesia, and indeed the mind in general. We were gratified to see the overall level of agreement with our general framework. For example, both of the authors endorse our connection between the percep...

We used UV resonance Raman (UVRR) spectroscopy to quantitatively correlate the peptide bond AmIII3 frequency to its Psi Ramachandran angle and to the number and types of amide hydrogen bonds at different temperatures. This information allows us to develop a family of relationships to directly estimate the Psi Ramachandran angle from measured UVRR AmIII3 frequencies for peptide bonds (PBs) with ...

Accurate description of the intrinsic preferences of amino acids is important to consider when developing a biomolecular force field. In this study, we use a modern energy partitioning approach called Interacting Quantum Atoms to inspect the cause of the φ and ψ torsional preferences of three dipeptides (Gly, Val, and Ile). Repeating energy trends at each of the molecular, functional group, and...

Surfaces revisited The target paper reviewed in this article was titled `̀ Transparency: relation to depth, subjective contours, luminance, and neon colour spreading'' coauthored by K Nakayama, S Shimojo, and V S Ramachandran, published in 1990. This paper, one of the first in a series on surface perception, examined how in untextured stereograms, local disparity and luminance contrast can drast...