title: Approaching exponential growth with a self-replicating peptide.
abstract: Self-replicating peptide systems hold great promise for a wide range of technological applications, as well as to address fundamental questions pertaining to the molecular origins of life. The development of self-replicating compounds capable of high efficiency, however, has remained elusive. Here we disclose a successful strategy whereby modulation of coiled-coil stability results in remarkable catalytic efficiency for self-replication. By shortening the peptide to the minimum length necessary for coiled-coil formation a highly efficient self-replicating system was obtained due to very low background reaction rates, bringing the efficiency close to naturally occurring enzymes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA.
authors.forename: Roy
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Issac
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chmielewski
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D006863:Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010455:Peptides / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry*; D011489:Protein Denaturation; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship; D013698:Templates, Genetic
chemical_list: C116123:E1E2 peptide; D010455:Peptides; C462101:RI-26 peptide