14IBCAT1FEASIBILITY - Engineering a Nano-factory for Peptide Synthesis

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Peptides are short chains of simple chemical building blocks called amino acids. They are involved in numerous key biological processes including acting as toxins, pigments, drugs and hormones. They also control many of the most important cellular functions in animals, plants and man, and are used as tools in scientific research. There is considerable worldwide interest in developing new methods of producing peptides in sufficient quantity and of sufficient quality for use as pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals or research tools. The current favoured method for manufacturing peptides involves using chemical agents to fuse together the amino acid building blocks that form them. This approach is time-consuming, expensive, generates toxic waste products, and cannot be applied to many unusual but valuable peptides. In this project we will develop a new method of producing peptides which is not limited by these major problems. We will use an engineered peptide 'nano-factory', which when introduced into bacteria allows them to produce significant quantities of high value 'difficult' peptides without any of the problems or complexities associated with chemical synthesis.