Exploring the protein-folding problem has been a long-standing challenge in molecular biology. Protein folding is highly dependent on folding of secondary structures as the way to pave a native folding pathway. Here, we demonstrate that a feature of a large hydrophobic surface area covering most side-chains on one side or the other side of adjacent $beta$-strands of a $beta$-sheet is prevail in almost all experimentally determined $beta$-sheets, indicating that folding of $beta$-sheets is most likely triggered by multistage hydrophobic interactions among neighbored side-chains of unfolded polypeptides, enable $beta$-sheets fold reproducibly following explicit physical folding codes in aqueous environments. $beta$-turns often contain five types of residues characterized with relatively small exposed hydrophobic proportions of their side-chains, that is explained as these residues can block hydrophobic effect among neighbored side-chains in sequence. Temperature dependence of the folding of $beta$-sheet is thus attributed to temperature dependence of the strength of the hydrophobicity. The hydrophobic-effect-based mechanism responsible for $beta$-sheets folding is verified by bioinformatics analyses of thousands of results available from experiments. The folding codes in amino acid sequence that dictate formation of a $beta$-hairpin can be deciphered through evaluating hydrophobic interaction among side-chains of an unfolded polypeptide from a $beta$-strand-like thermodynamic metastable state.
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