Green Peptide Synthesis

Chao-Jun Li, a chemistry professor at McGill University, has recently developed a new, green method of peptide synthesis. McGill University has chosen not to patent this new technology, and Dr. Li’s paper will soon be available for anyone to access. This green and cost effective technology may even make its way into biochemistry labs at Emory that currently use expensive and environmentally unfriendly peptide synthesizers.

The current technology synthesizes new peptides from scratch and requires the purchase of single amino acids. These single amino acids are fed into the machine individually and are added to the growing peptide chain using a collection of reagents, nasty organic solvents and blocking groups.

The method developed by Li exemplifies a major tenet of green chemistry by eliminating the use of blocking groups. Also, this process requires fewer steps for synthesis, thus reducing the amounts of organic solvents used. With this process, researches construct a simple “skeleton” peptide and use “simple reagents” to modify the peptide as needed. This method is also less expensive than the current technology, and according to Li, can be “readily adopted by labs anywhere in the world.”

I tried to find out more information about how this method works, but the paper hasn’t been made available on the PNAS website yet. It should be up sometime this week. Here is a link to the Science Daily article.