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Publication Abstract from PubMed

N-methylation of peptide backbones has often been utilized as a strategy towards the development of peptidic drugs. However, difficulties in the chemical synthesis, high cost of enantiopure N-methyl building blocks, and subsequent coupling inefficiencies have hampered larger-scale medicinal chemical efforts. Here, we present a chemoenzymatic strategy for backbone N-methylation by bioconjugation of peptides of interest to the catalytic scaffold of a borosin-type methyltransferase. Crystal structures of a substrate tolerant enzyme from Mycena rosella guided the design of a decoupled catalytic scaffold that can be linked via a heterobifunctional crosslinker to any peptide substrate of choice. Peptides linked to the scaffold, including those with non-proteinogenic residues, show robust backbone N-methylation. Various crosslinking strategies were tested to facilitate substrate disassembly, which enabled a reversible bioconjugation approach that efficiently released modified peptide. Our results provide general framework for the backbone N-methylation on any peptide of interest and may facilitate the production of large libraries of N-methylated peptides.

Bioconjugate Platform for Iterative Backbone N-Methylation of Peptides.,Zheng Y, Ongpipattanakul C, Nair SK ACS Catal. 2022 Nov 18;12(22):14006-14014. doi: 10.1021/acscatal.2c04681. Epub , 2022 Oct 31. PMID:36793448^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.