How to identify a coiled coil from the amino acid sequence?

Question

I was wondering, when we have an amino acid sequence, is it enough to check whether the positions a-d correspond to hydrophobic amino acids in order to say whether it can form a coiled coil structure? Or would we need to make sure the other positions are not hydrophobic too?

All help greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The heptad repeat, denoted [abcdefg]_n, typically has hydrophobic residues at a and d, and polar/charged residues at e and g.

From here.

There is a prediction tool with useful images here.