Peptide Chemistry Penetrates A Growing Range Of Disciplines

Peptides--the amino acid chains that make up proteins--were long relegated to a sideline of the much larger field of protein chemistry. But over the last few decades, their importance has grown as the understanding of these biological building blocks has become essential to a multitude of sciences, from agriculture to therapeutics to the Human Genome Project. As peptide chemistry continues to make its way into other disciplines, it behooves researchers from these disciplines to gain a basic gro

Written byHolly Ahern

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One of the first scientists to recognize the potential of peptide chemistry was Frederick Sanger, who in 1944 embarked upon a 12-year project to unravel the amino acid sequence of the protein molecule insulin. Sanger eventually solved this puzzle by breaking the insulin molecule into two peptide chains, breaking them in turn into still smaller chains, figuring out their sequences, and then overlapping the sequences of the constituent chains.

Sanger won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1958 for his work, and the science of peptide chemistry came into its own. Today's biochemists and molecular biologists are armed with a sophisticated array of equipment enabling them to separate and purify peptides; to take them apart, amino acid by amino acid; and to even synthesize useful peptides created to fit their own specific applications.

Peptides are a diverse class of molecules. They can function as cofactors to enhance enzymatic catalysis, or ...

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