Toward New Direction of Peptide Research in Natural Products Chemistry

Design and synthesis of ester bond-containing, unique precursor polypeptides opened the door for efficient chemical synthesis of aggregative amyloid peptides and human insulin. Peptide oligomers, derived from the aggregation of monomeric peptide, play important roles both in physiological and pathological events. The functions and higher-order structures of the oligomers are elusive, however, due to the transient, unstable properties of the oligomer states. We propose chemical synthesis of a stable oligomer model, which offers unexplored insight into the structure-function relationships of the peptide oligomers.