Markus Mentzer <mmentzer at students.wisc.edu> wrote:
> I've been trying to find methods of ligating strands of proteins to
> one another. Specifically, I have been trying to find ways to ligate a small
> piece of synthetic protein into a natural strand. So far I have found very
> little on this subject considering the fact that the implications of this
> technique are tremendous.
Protein chemistry is far more difficult than chemistry of nucleic acids.
To ligate two proteins to each other, you want to form an amid bond between
an aminoterminal NH3 (as opposed to epsilon NH3) and a carboxyterminal
COOH (as opposed to COOH groups of aspartate and glutamate) group. The
usual way to achieve this in peptide synthesis is to put protective
groups on the side chains you don't want to react. However, these
reactions are usually done under harsh conditions and the likelyhood
that a natural protein will retain its conformation under these conditions
is near zero.
You might also want to look into ubiquitin ligases which conjugate (fairly
unspecific) the small protein ubiquitin to epsilon amino groups of
lysines.
--Cornelius.
--
/* Cornelius Krasel, U Wuerzburg, Dept. of Pharmacology, Versbacher Str. 9 */
/* D-97078 Wuerzburg, Germany email: phak004 at rzbox.uni-wuerzburg.de SP4 */
/* "Science is the game we play with God to find out what His rules are." */
