The cooperative term significantly enhances the formation of beta sheets (P < 0.03 for downhill minimization simulations and P < 0.0004 for MCM simulations). (a) Success rates of MCM optimizations of 12 poly-alanine chains that borrowed their secondary structure assignment from mainly beta proteins (Table 1). Each box presents the interquartile range (between the 25th and 75th percentiles) of 100 optimization simulations, with a notch representing the median value. The dashed lines represent the lowest and highest data still within 1.5 interquartile ranges below the lower quartile, and above the third quartile. The asterisks indicate outliers outside that range. (b) Summary of the median results of all 12 chains in both downhill-minimization and MCM simulations. Each box represents 12 median values.