In the Ramachandran plot for glycine, what characteristic is observed?

In the Ramachandran plot, glycine is notable for its unique flexibility due to the absence of a bulky side chain. This allows glycine to adopt a wider range of dihedral angles (phi and psi) compared to other amino acids. The reason for this increased flexibility is that glycine has only a hydrogen atom as its side chain, which means there is less steric hindrance when trying to make various conformational angles. This characteristic is depicted in the Ramachandran plot, where glycine occupies more regions than other amino acids, enabling it to favor a variety of secondary structure conformations, including both α-helices and β-sheets.

The observation that glycine can adopt more angles contributes to its role in protein structure, often making it a residue found in loops and turn regions where flexibility is advantageous.