Microorganism growth in water supplies is a major problem in ecological research. The objective of this research was to synthesize peptide-polymer conjugates for isolating the algae: <i>Chlamydomonas reinhardt</i>ii (CR). The cell walls of <i>Chlamydomonas reinhardt</i>ii (CR) are primarily made up of 4-hydroxyproline rich glycopeptides, and it has been shown that synthetic 4-hydroxyproline rich peptides tightly bind to the cell wall of CR. Peptides with various hydroxyproline residues (6,9,12) and a beta-alanine linker were designed to test the effect of the poly-proline chain length on its ability to bind to the cell wall of CR.  In order to couple the peptides onto the carboxylated polymer, the C-terminus of the peptide was modified to an amino group. Ethylene diamine was loaded directly onto the resin, and a peptide containing 6 hydroxyproline residues was successfully synthesized. In order to optimize the reaction conditions for the peptide-polymer coupling, small compounds that resembled the peptide’s C-terminus were created, but further work is required on the isolation of those compounds. Further work also needs to be done on investigating which diamine would be the best to utilize for the C-terminal modification.

Synthesis and modification of 4-hydroxyproline rich polypeptide oligomers

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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