Furka, Á., Sebestyén, F., Asgedom, M., Dibó, G. CORNUCOPIA OF PEPTIDES BY SYNTHESIS (1988) . In Highlights of Modern Biochemistry, Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Biochemistry, Vol. 5, p. 47, VSP.Utrecht.
ABSTRACT:
The total number of possible peptides grows rapidly with the number of constituent amino acid residues. There are, for example, 400 di-, 8000 tri-, 160000 tetra- and 3200000 different pentapeptides. A considerable number of these can be supposed to be biologically active. In spite the methodological progress, the synthesis and testing of many thousands of peptides one by one is still a hopeless job. Exploiting the possibilities inherent in the Merrifield-method, dramatic improvement can be achieved in the efficiency of synthesis, if we accept peptide mixtures instead of individual peptides. The principle of the method can be illustrated by brief description of the synthesis of a mixture 9 tetrapaptides: a sample of aminoacyl (Ala) resin is divided into 3 equal parts. One part is coupled with Glu, the other with Lys and the last one with Phe. The resultant samples are then thoroughly mixed and again divided into 3 parts. These are coupled with Glu, Lys and Phe, respectively. Finally the samples are mixed, then coupled with Glu. After processing the following peptides are present in the mixture: GluGluGluAla, GluGluPheAla, GluGluLysAla, GluPheGluAla, GluPhePheAla, GluPheLysAla, GluLysGluAla, GluLysPheAla, GluLysLysAla.
Our experiments show that a mixture containing as many as 180 pentapeptides could easily be synthesized in a single run. No biological tests on the mixtures were performed so far. partners are welcomed for cooperation.

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