Chloroplast transit peptides. The perfect random coil?

Abstract

Structural analysis of chloroplast transit peptides (cTPs), including secondary structure prediction and analysis of 'cTP-like' peptides of known 3D structure, suggests that cTPs are essentially flexible peptides devoid of regular secondary or tertiary structure. It is proposed that cTPs may be designed to interact with a succession of different chaperones on the chloroplast protein-import pathway.