In this project, we aim to engineer alpha-helical peptidic scaffolds containing stable, functional metal coordination sites that mimic large metalloenzymes. These scaffolds are based on Hybrid Coordination Motifs (HCMs) that are composed of a natural coordinating amino acid (e.g. histidine), and an inorganic bidentate ligand 7 residues away on the helical surface.  HCMs can accommodate several first row transition metals with affinities as high as pM-fM, resulting from the chelate effect. Here we describe the utilization of the HCM to helically fold and functionalize short peptides as short as 10 residues. Metal coordination on these metallopeptides can be readily tuned to yield useful catalytic and spectroscopic properties, while the peptide scaffold provides biological target capability.

New metal coordination platforms on small peptides

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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