In vitro expression of macrocyclic peptides

Abstract:: Peptides made of twenty natural amino acids cover only a very small fraction of the available chemical and functional space. While a peptide's functionality can be expended with unnatural amino acids, the methods for their site-selective incorporation are inefficient. The project will develop a novel strategy for the production of polypeptides with unnatural chemical groups using a sense codon reassignment approach. The strategy relies on the depletion of selected tRNAs from an in vitro protein translation system and their replacement with synthetic tRNAs, charged with unnatural amino acids. The developed technology will be used to rapidly generate and screen highly diversified macrocyclic peptide libraries.
Grant type:: ARC Linkage Projects
Funded by:: Australian Research Council

The University of Queensland