Thursday, August 27, 2020

Selective N-Terminal Cysteine Protein Modification with Cyclopropenones [@gbernardes_chem]

Istrate, A.; Navo, C. D.; Sousa, B. B.; Marques, M. C.; Deery, M.; Bond, A.; Corzana, F.; Jiménez-Osés, G.; Bernardes, G.

ChemRxiv. 2020
https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv.12866873.v1

Protein conjugates are valuable tools to create therapeutics, such as antibody-drug conjugates, or to study biological processes. Despite a number of protein conjugation strategies having been developed over recent years, the ability to modify one specific amino acid on a protein in the presence of other side chains with similar reactivity remains a challenge. We used the reaction between a monosubstituted cyclopropenone (CPO) probe and the 1,2-aminothiol of an N-terminal cysteine to give a stable 1,4-thiazepa-5-none linkage under mild, biocompatible conditions. The method relies on the ability of cyclopropenones to ring-open after sequential sulfhydryl and α-amine conjugation to be truly specific for N-terminal cysteine. We show that our CPO probes selectively label N-terminal cysteine containing peptides and proteins even in the presence of internal, solvent-exposed cysteines, which can be subsequently modified by using conventional cysteine modification reagents. The ability to distinguish and specifically target N-terminal cysteine residues on a protein will facilitate the construction of elaborate multi-labelled bioconjugates.


Allosteric Covalent Inhibitors of the STAT3 Transcription Factor from Virtual Screening

Tibor Viktor Szalai, Vincenzo di Lorenzo, Nikolett Péczka, Levente M. Mihalovits, László Petri, Qirat F. Ashraf, Elvin D. de Araujo, Viktor ...