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0:00
Dear listeners, my
name is Lei Liu.
I come from Tsinghua
University in Beijing.
Today I'm glad to share with you
the Chemical Synthesis
of Proteins.
0:12
First, we need to emphasize
that proteins are
large organic molecules that
connect chemistry to life.
Proteins are important
for understanding
how life works at
the molecular level.
Proteins are also increasingly
being developed as drugs.
In addition, proteins
are receiving
increasing attention in
the development of
advanced materials.
0:37
Proteins are usually produced
by genetic recombination
techniques.
However, there are many proteins
that cannot be
obtained biologically.
This includes proteins with
complex post-translational
modifications,
proteins with unnatural
functional motifs,
and proteins composed entirely
of mirror-image D-amino acids.
1:02
Our central question
is how to generate
proteins that are not
biologically available.
The way to achieve this
goal is chemistry.
In retrosynthetic
thinking, we can achieve
our goal through a
divide-and-conquer strategy.
First, we need to produce
the building blocks of our
targeted proteins which
we call protein segments, by
total chemical synthesis
or recombinant expression.
Then, we need to assemble
these protein segments through
chemical transformations
to produce
correctly folded
targeted proteins.
1:39
Going back to the origins of
chemical protein synthesis, at
the beginning of
the 20th century,
Emil Fischer and his
contemporary chemists
came up with the idea of making
enzymes through
synthetic chemistry.
At that time, synthesizing
even a small peptide was
a significant challenge.
