An overview of the use of non-protein amino acids in the design of conformationally well-defined peptides, based on work from the author’s laboratory, is discussed. The crystal structures of several designed oligopeptides illustrate the useα-aminoisobutyric acid (Aib) in the construction of helices, D-amino acids in the design of helix termination segments andDPro-Xxx segments for nucleating ofβ-hairpin structures.β- andγ-amino acid residues have been used to expand the range of designed polypeptide structures.
