Abstract: The invention relates to nonpeptide oligomers of amino acids. The oligomers comprise —(NR′-A-CO)—O— units which represent a nonpeptide, restricted-mimetic inducer of the &bgr; turn in a dipeptide or tripeptide fragment. Said oligomers may be produced by peptide synthesis techniques, whether in solution or in the solid phase, and can be used in the synthesis of synthetic proteins or polypeptides, in which the peptide fragment(s) (is) are identical to those of the corresponding natural protein or polypeptide and whose structural fragment(s) comprise(s) a fragment of an oligomer according to the invention.

Abstract: A method for identifying putative peptides of a given function from among nucleotide or peptide sequences of unknown function comprising the steps of: (i) obtaining a polynucleotide or polypeptide database; (ii) screening the database for the presence of a combination of nucleotides or amino acids indicative of the peptide of given function; (ii) identifying the polynucleotide or polypeptide sequences which comprise the combination of nucleotides or amino acids indicative of the peptide of given function.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method for identifying putative peptides from nucleotides or peptide sequences of unknown function such as both nucleic acid and peptide precursors of a peptide comprising an amidated C-terminal end and, more particularly, to a method wherein putative peptide precursors are identified from a genetic database.