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Updated: Dec 30, 2025
Synthesis and Structure Determination of µ-Conotoxin PIIIA Isomers with Different Disulfide Connectivities
Published on: October 2, 2018
De novo design of constrained and sequence-independent peptide scaffolds with topologically-formidable disulfide
Yiwu Zheng1, Xiaoting Meng1, Yaqi Wu1
1The MOE Key Laboratory of Spectrochemical Analysis and Instrumentation , State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces , Department of Chemistry , College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering , Xiamen University , Xiamen , 361005 , P. R. China .
Abstract:
Disulfide-rich peptides are interesting scaffolds for drug design and discovery. However, peptide scaffolds constrained by disulfide bonds, either naturally occurring or computationally designed, have been suffering from the elusive (oxidative) folding behavior complying with Anfinsen's dogma, which strongly restricts their applicability in bioactive peptide design and discovery; because when primary peptide sequences are extensively manipulated, their disulfide connectivities might become scrambled. Here we present the design of cysteine/penicillamine (C/Pen)-mixed peptide frameworks that are capable of folding into specific regioisomers without dependence on primary amino acid sequences. Even certain folds that are considered to be topologically formidable can be generated in high yields. Currently, almost all disulfide-rich peptide scaffolds are vitally correlated to primary amino acid sequences, but ours are exceptional. These scaffolds should be of particular interest for further designing constrained peptides with new structures and functions, and more importantly, the ultimately designed peptides would not suffer from general oxidative folding problems.
