Templating Peptide Chemistry with Nucleic Acids: Toward Artificial Ribosomes, Cell-Specific Therapeutics, and Novel...

In biology, nanomachines like the ribosome use nucleic acid templates to synthesize polymers in a sequence-specific, programmable fashion. Researchers have long been interested in using the programmable properties of nucleic acids to enhance chemical reactions via colocalization of reagents using complementary nucleic acid handles. In this review, we describe progress in using nucleic acid templates, handles, or splints to enhance the covalent coupling of peptides to other peptides or oligonucleotides. We discuss work in several areas: creating ribosome-mimetic systems, synthesizing bioactive peptides on DNA or RNA templates, linking peptides into longer molecules and bioactive antibody mimics, and scaffolding peptides to build protein-mimetic architectures. We close by highlighting the challenges that must be overcome in nucleic acid-templated peptide chemistry in two areas: making full-length, functional proteins from synthetic peptides and creating novel protein-mimetic architectures not possible through macromolecular folding alone.