Biosynthetic Incorporation of Fluorinated Amino Acids into Peptides and Proteins

Abstract

Native and engineered protein biosynthetic machinery processes a wide range of fluorinated α-amino acids for incorporation into peptides and proteins, either as substitutes for structurally similar amino acids normally found in proteins, or as additional ones. In the former case, replacement occurs wherever the normal amino acid is encoded, while the latter method is site-specific. The fluorinated peptides have a diverse variety of interesting properties. The biochemical synthetic methods are straightforward, to the point that they should routinely be assessed as alternatives to traditional solid- and solution-phase peptide synthesis.