Solid-phase synthesis and crystallization of monellin, an intensely sweet protein

Monellin, a sweet protein, consists of two noncovalently associated polypeptide chains, the A chain of 44 amino acid residues and the B chain of 50 residues. Two different primary structures have been reported for each of the A and B chains. The A and B chains corresponding to one of the reported monellin structures were synthesized by the stepwise solid-phase method using the Fmoc strategy in overall yields of 14.1% and 5.6%, respectively. The characterization of the synthetic peptides by HPLC, FAB-MS, amino acid analysis and sequencing fully supported the expected structures. The individual synthetic A and B chains were not sweet. Combination of the two chains, and subsequent HPLC purification gave monellin in a yield of 53.9%. The synthetic monellin had a distinct, lingering sweet taste (4000 times sweeter than sucrose) and was crystallized by a vapor diffusion method. The synthetic product was identical to natural monellin by HPLC, but not by tryptic mapping. These results indicate that the reported structure for monellin differs slightly from that of natural monellin.