Trifluoroethanol (TFE) is often used to increase the helicity of peptides to make them usable as models of helices in proteins. We have measured helix propensities for all 20 amino acids in water and two concentrations of trifluoroethanol, 15 and 40% (v/v) using, as a model system, a peptide derived from the sequence of the a-helix of ribonuclease T I . There are three main conclusions from our studies. (1) TFE alters electrostatic interactions in the ribonuclease T I helical peptide such that the dependence of the helical content on pH is lost in 40% TFE. (2) Helix propensities measured in 15% TFE correlate well with propensities measured in water, however, the correlation with propensities measured in 40% TFE is significantly worse. (3) Propensities measured in alanine-based peptides and the ribonuclease T I peptide in TFE show very poor agreement, revealing that TFE greatly increases the effect of sequence context. Keywords: a-helix; helical propensity; peptide; ribonuclease TI ; TFE; trifluoroethanol The tendency of some short peptides to form helical structure in solution has led to their use as models for protein folding and stability. These include synthetic peptides of de novo design (some recent reviews: Chakrabartty & Baldwin, 1995; Scholtz & Baldwin, 1995;Kallenbach et al., 1996), and protein fragments (e.g., Goodman & Kim, 1989;Waltho et al., 1993;Myers et al., 1996). Structured peptides can serve as models for investigating the contribution of local interactions to protein folding and stability (Muiioz & Serrano, 1996;Myers et al., 1996).2,2,2-TrifluoroethanoI (TFE) is a co-solvent that has been shown to stabilize helical structure in peptides (Goodman et al., 1963;Nelson & Kallenbach, 1986;Jasanoff & Fersht, 1994; CammersGoodwin et al., 1996; Luo & Baldwin, 1997 and references therein). Peptide fragments of protein helices often show little helix formation in water, and TFE is frequently used to induce helix formation (Sonnischen et al., 1992;Hamada et al., 1995;Kemmink & Creighton, 1995;Yang et al., 1995;Bolin et al., 1996). Although its use is widespread, the mechanism of TFE stabilization of secondary structure is not clear. One important question is whether helix propensities of the amino acids measured in water still apply in aqueous TFE solutions. This question has been addressed recently in alanine-based peptides by Baldwin and co-workers (Rohl et al., 1996;Luo & Baldwin, 1997). For reasons that are not completely clear, in water the helix propensities are twice as large in alaninebased peptides than in peptides based on natural protein sequences. Because TFE is used so widely, it is important to compare its effect on helix formation in natural peptide sequences.Recently, we have developed a variant of the small protein ribonuclease TI (RNase T I ) and a peptide corresponding to the single a-helix of RNase T I as a model system. We have used the T I peptide/protein system previously to compare directly helix propensities in peptides and proteins (Myers et al., 1997a(Myers et al., , 1...