Previous research on the favorable effects of mild conformational restriction in the N-terminal region of glucagon has led us to carry out analogue studies on the sequence-related 1-12 region of GRF(1-29)NH2. Replacement of each of the first 11 amino acids by its D-isomer in turn gave a total of 5 analogues exhibiting increases in potency. Other analogues containing multiple D-amino acid replacements were also examined and found to be highly potent, for instance: D-Tyr-1,D-Ala-2, 2630; His-1,D-Ala-2, 3440; Ac-His-1,D-Ala-2, 1574; D-Ala-2,Nle-27, 1840; D-Ala-2,D-Asn-8,Nle-27, 1580; D-Ala-2,D-Asp-3,D-Asn-8,Nle-27, 2000; D-Asp-3,D-Asn-8,Nle-27, 3810 (GRF(1-29) = 100%). It is possible that these results with D-isomers reflect the presence of reverse turns (beta-bends) in this region of GRF. Indeed, the qualitative predictive method of Chou and Fasman supports this theory and indicates reverse turns in the 1-5 and 6-10 sequences. Further studies were performed to test this hypothesis by introducing even more rigidity into the N-terminal region via disulfide bond formation between positions normally containing aromatic amino acids. None of the bridged peptides displayed biological activity which suggests that chain folding does not produce any proximity among N-terminal residues. We had shown previously that position 2(Ala) was extremely sensitive to both conformational and side-chain alterations. This observation was extended to analogues containing Sar and Pro, both of which were also inactive on GH release at the doses tested.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)