Chemistry of the Molecules of Life: Total Synthesis of Enzymes for Biological Research

摘要

The total chemical synthesis of enzyme molecules has been one of the classic goals of organic chemistry, from the time of the great German chemist Emil Fischer (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1902). In the intervening 100 years, a variety of synthetic approaches were developed and a number of attempted syntheses of enzymes were undertaken with mixed success. However, until recently no reproducible, practical syntheses of enzyme molecules had been reported. Since the mid-1990s, that situation has changed. CHEMICAL LIGATION OF UNPROTECTED PEPTIDES The introduction by the Kent laboratory of the chemical ligation concept - the chemoselective reaction of unprotected peptides - and the native chemical ligation method has enabled the effective total synthesis of large proteins including enzyme molecules. Numerous proteins ranging in size up to 200 amino acid residues and molecular mass in excess of 50kiloDaltons have been synthesized.