Guest Seminar - Selective Bioconjugation of Peptides and Proteins

Selective modification of peptides and proteins has received significant attention over the past
decades, with diverse applications in cellular function elucidation, biopharmaceutical development,
and protein-based materials construction. Although bioconjugation reactions for specific amino acid
modification have been developed, due to the prevalence of multiple targeted residues on protein
surface, only a few of them are amenable to give single-site modification. For site-selective
modification, current methods mainly focus on labeling of the low abundant free cysteine residue or
non-canonical amino acids, which may require sophisticated sequence engineering. Some examples
targeting the C-terminus or specific lysine ε-amino group have also been reported. Despite these
advances, it is still of importance to develop new methods for site-selective protein functionalization.
Over the years, we have been developing new chemical methods for bioconjugation including
selective modification of N-terminal a-amino group, cysteine-containing peptides and proteins, and aldehyde-containing oligosaccharides. In this talk, I will present our works on selective bioconjugation of peptides and proteins.