Chemically synthesized small polymers of amino acids are synthetic peptides. An analogy for synthetic peptides is oligos, a kind of DNA molecule. As early as the 1950s and ’60s, peptide links among two amino acids were detected, and the first small proteins were chemically synthesized.
The carboxyl unit of an amino acid is attached to the carboxyl group of the previous amino acid in a peptide sequence. Some reactive groups on the side links and termini must be chemically insulated to prevent undesired reactions.
Several companies can produce peptides on a large scale and ship them to you within a few days. If you are a researcher, you may find peptides for sale online, but keep in mind that they must solely be utilized for scientific purposes. This piece will examine the advantages and disadvantages of synthetic peptides like biotechpeptides.
Synthetic peptides, as opposed to recombinant proteins.
Is it feasible to create a whole protein from scratch? For example, Insulin A and B strings are polypeptides with a maximum amino acid length of 20 to 50, the same as synthetic peptides.
The ligation of synthetic peptides may be used to create large, complex proteins. To manufacture GFP, researchers assembled and connected partially protected peptides. The fluorescence profile in the solution was found to be identical to that of GFP recombinantly produced in the laboratory. But we’ll go into more detail about this in the second part. It’s possible to synthesize a whole protein, but it’s not as easy as it seems, and it’s not always applicable.
The importance of in vitro translation systems cannot be overstated (IVT). Peptides may be made in a test tube using wheat germ or rabbit reticulocyte extracts, mRNA, amino acids, and salts instead of living cells. Using IVT, a polypeptide may be produced without growing cells. This approach may be used to create proteins that may be detrimental to the host cell. A peptide containing more than 100 amino acids may be produced in a short amount of time using IVT in small-scale applications.
If IVT-produced proteins are superior to recombinant ones, why bother with them?
What’s the goal of synthetic peptides?
There is no need to worry about complicated cell culture systems or subsequent purification methods with recombinant proteins. If you need many SH3 binding motifs, they may be quickly synthesized.
Second, you may isolate specific regions of proteins, such as kinase substrates or binding sites, for further study. Full-length proteins may include additional elements, domains, or motifs that may interfere with this experiment. In contrast, peptides might fall short if the connection is too intricate to work effectively.
Synthetic peptides may also be used to perform high-throughput testing because of the ease with which they can be manufactured in large quantities. For kinetic measurements, you can only use a few protein analytes at a time since purified proteins need so much labor to acquire good material.
Synthetic peptides are a great way of supplementing substances that the body loses over time. This reason is why researchers have made peptides a priority in the last decades of studying. Please remember that peptides must be solely used for research purposes, in a controlled lab environment, and only by licensed professionals.
