labudde@fmp-berlin.de.

Background: A reliable prediction of the Xaa-Pro peptide bond conformation would be a useful tool for many protein structure calculation methods. We have analyzed the Protein Data Bank and show that the combined use of sequential and structural information has a predictive value for the assessment of the cis versus trans peptide bond conformation of Xaa-Pro within proteins. For the analysis of the data sets different statistical methods such as the calculation of the Chou-Fasman parameters and occurrence matrices were used. Furthermore we analyzed the relationship between the relative solvent accessibility and the relative occurrence of prolines in the cis and in the trans conformation.