14IBCAT1FEASIBILITY - Engineering a Nano-factory for Peptide Synthesis

多肽是一种叫做氨基酸的简单化学构件的短链。它们参与了许多关键的生物过程，包括作为毒素、色素、药物和激素。它们还控制着动物、植物和人类许多最重要的细胞功能，并被用作科学研究的工具。世界范围内对开发生产足够数量和足够质量的多肽的新方法有相当大的兴趣，这些多肽可用作药物、农用化学品或研究工具。目前最受欢迎的制造多肽的方法是使用化学试剂将形成多肽的氨基酸组成部分融合在一起。这种方法耗时，昂贵，产生有毒废物，并且不能应用于许多不寻常但有价值的肽。在这个项目中，我们将开发一种不受这些主要问题限制的生产肽的新方法。我们将使用一种工程肽“纳米工厂”，当将其引入细菌中时，它们可以生产大量高价值的“困难”肽，而不会出现化学合成相关的任何问题或复杂性。

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.