Molecular evolutionary engineering is a method used to harness the power of natural selection to evolve proteins or RNA with desirable properties not found in nature. The possibility of evolving a commonly existing biomolecule into a variety of functional biomolecules has now been realized in the form of aptamers through the development of in vitro selection. In addition to their high affinity and high specificity for the desired targets, aptamers are easily synthesized chemically and can be modified for downstream applications. Although aptamers were originally selected from a library containing only natural components, the past decade has seen a wealth of new aptamers selected from libraries containing unnatural components to provide new aptamer functions artificially. Here I highlight this transition (the shift between selection from natural components and selection from unnatural components) and the applications of the selected aptamers.The first is development of a peptide that binds and emits fluorescence in response to the conformational change of target protein. The second is preparation of photo-responsive peptide that binds to and is released from target molecule in response to photo-irradiation. The third is the enhancement of inhibitory activity of small molecule against target enzyme by increasing the extent of interaction between the inhibitor and the target by coupling a peptide aptamer to small molecule. For each selection, a fluorescent molecule which is sensitive to environmental conditions, a photo-isomerizable molecule azobenzene, or an inhibitor molecule was attached to tRNA through amino acid and bioorthogonal evolution was performed.

Creation of functional peptides using bioorthogonal evolution

248th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.