Efficient formation of heterodimers from peptides and proteins using unsymmetrical polyfluorophenyl esters of dicarboxylic acids.

An efficient method for the heteroconjugation of biomolecules carrying free amino groups was reported previously, where mixed polyfluorophenyl diesters of dicarboxylic acids with varied aliphatic chain length were shown to be efficient reagents for the conjugation of a variety of model biomolecules. The concept was based on the differential reactivity of the esters towards amines. The concept has now been further optimized, and a 2,6-difluorophenyl-pentafluorophenyl diester combination has been demonstrated to be the most efficient, both with respect to selectivity and to reaction rate.

The molecular recognition of phosphorylated proteins by designed polypeptides conjugated to a small molecule that binds phosphate.

The conjugation of polypeptides from a designed set to the small molecule ligand 3,5-bis[[bis(2-pyridylmethyl)amino]methyl]benzoic acid, which in the presence of Zn(2+) ions binds inorganic phosphate, has been shown to provide a polypeptide conjugate that binds α-casein, a multiply phosphorylated protein, with a dissociation constant K(D) of 17 nM. The measured affinity is more than three orders of magnitude higher than that of the small molecule ligand for phosphate and the binding of 500 nM of α-casein was not inhibited by 10 mM phosphate buffer, providing a 2000-fold excess of phosphate ion over protein. The selectivity for phosphoproteins was demonstrated by extraction of α-casein from solutions of various complexity, including milk and human serum spiked with α-casein.