Disulfide rich peptides have gained significant attention recently due to their incredible biological stability and tolerance to epitope grafting.  This class of peptides is often folded in solution, assuming the desired disulfide bond pattern correlates with the most thermodynamically stable structure.  Sometimes though, especially for chemically synthesized cysteine rich peptides, this is not the case.  The result is a complex mixture of peptides with varying disulfide bonding patterns and identical mass.

Resins for solid phase peptide synthesis can vary significantly in both functionalization and composition, leading to mixed results at the end of a synthesis.  Previously, I demonstrated how the resin loading level affects the success or failure of your peptide synthesis.

In today’s post, I’ll highlight how both the hydrophilicity and swelling capacity of your resin can influence your peptide synthesis.

When it comes to synthesizing a peptide, the first thing that comes to mind is the number of stoichiometric equivalents to use.  Sometimes that number is as few as 1.5, sometimes it’s as high as 20!

But have you ever thought about the liquid volume that contains those molecules and how that might affect the success of your coupling reaction?  In this post I will discuss the impact of amino acid concentration in the overall success of solid phase peptide synthesis.

It used to be easy with only polystyrene based resin types, but nowadays there is a broad choice of types to choose from, including everything from the C-terminal functionality (Rink vs Wang) to the polymer from which the resin itself is synthesized.

All resins have one thing in common, and that’s the reactive site loading level. In this post, I will share my experiences with how this important factor impacts the success of peptide synthesis.

More and more groups are exploring the utility of peptides with an ever widening variety of applications. And although peptides are getting cheaper to purchase outright, many groups are continuing to bring peptide synthesis in house. As more groups join the peptide community, I frequently encounter questions about the basics of peptide synthesis.

In a previous post, I did some work evaluating the efficiency of alloc removal with tetrakis palladium using microwave assistance and atmospheric conditions, which worked beautifully.  Given the known sensitivity of palladium catalysts (see Derek Lowe's post for a humorous dialogue), I sought to further explore the sensitivity of palladium towards the alloc removal in the context of a peptide.

In this post, I'll explore a variety of atmospheric, room temperature alloc deprotection conditions aimed at evaluating the catalytic lifetime of palladium tetrakis for effective alloc removal. 

As a chemist new to the peptide community, there are many choices that have to be made.  Which coupling reagents to use? Heat or no heat to promote chemistry? And most importantly, which resin?  I have talked previously about resin choices, from loading levels to swelling capacity and how they affect the synthesis outcome.  But I haven't addressed yet a fundamental feature of commercially available resins, and that's the functional handle to which the peptide chain is conjugated.

In today's post, I'll describe some, and I mean only some, of the most commonly used chemical functionalities for Fmoc-based solid phase peptide synthesis and some scenarios in which you would choose one resin type over another.

Orthogonal amino acid protecting groups effectively expand the chemical tool kit available to peptide chemists allowing for synthesis of much more complex molecules.  Often times, orthogonal protecting groups are used in Fmoc-based chemistry to facilitate post-synthesis modifications of peptides, like the addition of small molecule fluorophores and more commonly now, peptide cyclization efforts.

There are several strategies employed when a peptide synthesis requires optimization.  Typically, the first thing considered is whether or not to double couple specific amino acids within the sequence.  This is somewhat of a change in mentality from traditional room temperature synthesis strategies where double coupling is frequently used for the entire peptide sequence.

As the complexity of peptides continues to grow, so does the use of amino acids with side chain protecting groups that can be selectively removed, leaving the peptide on resin and the remaining side chain protecting groups intact.  While there are  protocols to be found in the literature, they may not work to the highest level of efficiency every single time.  This can lead to disasterous results for any subsequent chemistry.

While resins loaded with the natural 20 amino acids are commercially available these days, there may be times when loading the first amino acid onto the resin in house may be necessary.  And unlike loading the first amino acid onto amide-leaving resins, the first coupling reaction for C-terminal acids can be chemically more challenging.

While many of the standard amino acids can be purchased pre-loaded onto Wang type resins, there are still cases where coupling the first amino acid onto Wang resin manually is necessary.  In my case, an unnatural amino acid was required on the C-terminus so there was not a commercially available source.

In today’s post I’ll answer the above question by comparing the crude purity of peptides synthesized using amino acid stock solutions or freshly dissolved amino acids.