title: Chemoselective peptidomimetic ligation using thioacid peptides and aziridine templates.
abstract: Chemoselective peptidomimetic ligation has been made possible using thioacid peptides and NH aziridine-terminated amino acids and peptides. In the course of this reaction, a reduced amide bond is incorporated into the backbone of a peptide. This process enables incorporation of reduced cysteine, reduced substituted cysteine, reduced phenylalanine, and reduced alanine. Our method should be adaptable to other unnatural amino acid residues at the ligation site. Experiments aimed at evaluating the chemoselectivity of this process in the presence of competing thiol nucleophiles suggest high specificity at micromolar concentrations. This holds even in the presence of glutathione, which neutralizes xenobiotic electrophiles in cells.
authors.affiliation: Davenport Research Laboratories, Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, 80 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3H6.
authors.forename: Naila
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Assem
authors.forename: Aditya
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Natarajan
authors.forename: Andrei K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Yudin
mesh_terms: D001388:Aziridines / Q000737:chemistry*; D040761:Biomimetic Materials / Q000737:chemistry*; D010455:Peptides / Q000737:chemistry*; D013379:Substrate Specificity; D013438:Sulfhydryl Compounds / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D001388:Aziridines; D010455:Peptides; D013438:Sulfhydryl Compounds; C033132:aziridine