Combining chemical and biological techniques to produce modified proteins

Abstract

Control over protein structure can be improved by the combination of recent developments in peptide synthesis with molecular biological and biochemical techniques. This combination makes it possible to introduce modified amino acids or other moieties with different chemical characteristics into proteins, and the technique of chemical ligation of fragments (see scheme) provides a route to larger proteins than could be synthesized in the past. Modified proteins have applications in structure-function studies and cell biology investigations and are potentially of importance for biotechnology and therapeutics.