Investigation of class III and IV lanthipeptide processing enzymes, lanthipeptidetailoring enzymes and of lanthipeptides in epitope grafting

兰硫肽是一类有趣而多样的天然产物，关于它还有很多有待发现的地方。在这一研究项目的背景下，这一研究领域的不同方面将得到解决。首先，将研究III和IV类羊硫肽的生物合成和酶，因为这些类是到目前为止研究最少的类，因此对于这些系统仍然有许多问题没有回答。此外，它还计划分离新的假定的羊硫肽剪裁酶，这些酶被认为将迄今未见的化学修饰引入到羊硫肽结构中。最后的研究方面同时也是最受应用程序驱动的方面。在这里，将测试良好的羊硫肽支架是否以及如何用于表位嫁接方法，即将小的生物活性多肽表位掺入到稳定的多肽支架的序列中。综上所述，该项目的目标是为阐明第三类和第四类羊硫肽生物合成背后的机制以及可能的剪裁酶所涉及的研究做出贡献，并探索这类天然产物是否适合作为药物开发的支架。

Lanthipeptides are an interesting and diverse class of natural products, about which still much is to discover. In context of this research project, different aspects of this research area will be tackled. Initially, the biosynthesis and enzymes of class III and IV lanthipeptides will be investigated, as these classes are so far the least thorough studied ones and hence there are still many question unanswered for these systems. Furthermore, it is planned to isolate novel putative lanthipeptide tailoring enzymes, which are assumed to introduce so far unseen chemical modifications into lanthipeptide structures. The final research aspect is at the same time the most application driven one. Here, it shall be tested if and how good lanthipeptide scaffolds can be utilized for epitope grafting approaches, i.e. the incorporation of small bioactive peptide epitopes into the sequence of a stable peptide scaffold. In summary, the goal of this project is thus to contribute to the research involved in the elucidation of the mechanism behind the biosynthesis of class III and IV lanthipeptides and of possible tailoring enzymes, as well as to probe, if this class of natural products is suitable as scaffold for drug development.