Construction of coordinatively saturated rhodium complexes containing appended peptides

Phenanthrenequinone diimine (phi) complexes of rhodium(III) bearing appended peptides have been prepared using two complementary solid phase synthetic strategies. The first method involves the direct coupling of the coordinatively saturated rhodium complex containing a pendant carboxylate to the N-terminus of a resin-bound peptide, in a manner analogous to the chain-elongation step in solid phase peptide synthesis. The second involves coupling a bidentate chelator containing the pendant carboxylate to the resin-bound peptide, followed by coordination of [Rh(phi)2]3+ to the bidentate chelator attached to the peptide. Peptides of length 5-30 residues have been covalently attached to rhodium complexes in 5-18% yield using both methods. Despite the low overall yields, the regioselective modification of the peptide chain afforded by these strategies is a distinct advantage over solution phase methods. With coordination complexes which are stable to peptide deprotection and cleavage conditions from the resin, the solid phase synthetic strategies are convenient to apply. Amino acid analysis, electronic spectroscopy, and circular dichroism confirm the presence of the two components in the metal-peptide chimeras; the metal-peptide complexes exhibit the combined spectral properties of the parent metal complex and the appended peptide. Significantly, plasma desorption mass spectrometry reveals a novel pattern of peptide fragmentation for the metal-peptide chimeras that is not observed in the absence of the tethered metal complex; this fragmentation facilitates the sequence analysis of the appended peptide. Thus, metal-peptide chimeras may be conveniently prepared using solid phase methodologies, and features of coordination chemistry may be exploited for new peptide design and analysis.