Protease-Catalyzed Peptide Synthesis

Abstract

Peptides play a fundamental role in the function of living systems. Since the demand for peptides is enormous, classical chemical synthesis in solution, solid-phase synthesis and recombinant techniques belong to the most important methods of peptide synthesis. Unfortunately, neither of these methods is completely free of drawbacks. Especially chemical synthesis of peptides often suffers from problems such as time-consuming side-chain protection/deprotection requirements, racemization and other side-reactions. Furthermore, in recombinant DNA methods, the incorporation of unnatural amino acids is limited in preparative scale. For these reasons, the use of suitable peptide ligases should provide an attractive alternative by combining the flexibility of chemical strategies with the advantages of the regio- and stereospecific enzymatic reactions (Jakubke 1987; Bongers and Heimer 1994; Jakubke 1994; Bordusa et al. 1997).KeywordsPeptide SynthesisAcyl DonorPreparative ScaleAcyl TransferPeptide Bond FormationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.