Since the invention of solid phase synthetic methods by Merrifield in 1963, the number of research groups focusing on peptide synthesis has grown exponentially. However, the original step-by-step synthesis had limitations: the purity of the final product decreased with the number of coupling steps. After the development of Boc and Fmoc protecting groups, novel amino acid protecting groups and n...

Francis AA, Mehta B, Zenisek D. Development of new peptide-based tools for studying synaptic ribbon function. J Neurophysiol 106: 1028–1037, 2011. First published June 8, 2011; doi:10.1152/jn.00255.2011.—Synaptic ribbons are proteinaceous specialized electron-dense presynaptic structures found in nonspiking sensory cells of the vertebrate nervous system. Understanding the function of these stru...

In headline-grabbing reports called “Falling through the Net,” the United States’ Department of Commerce began reporting in 1999 an increasing gap between those who have access to information technology and those who do not, with poor people, minority populations, elderly people and women disproportionately losing ground (Department of Commerce 1999, NTIA 1999). The digital divide can be seen a...

This chapter will focus on critically evaluating some selected new methods to achieve the asymmetric synthesis of a-amino acids. It is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather to reflect some of the possibilities opening up in this area. The study of a-amino acids is one of fundamental importance to many areas of chemistry and its relation to molecular biology. Nature only utilizes 20 amino ac...

Circular dichroism and two-dimensional NMR spectra indicate that a peptide fragment consisting of the first 28 residues from the N-terminus of human growth hormone (hGH 1-28) has considerable alpha-helical structure. The peptide, (1) H-Phe-Pro-Thr-Ile-Pro-Leu-Ser-Arg-Leu-Phe-Asp-Asn-Ala-Met-Leu-Arg-Ala-Hi s-Arg- Leu-His-Gln-Leu-Ala-Phe-Asp-Thr-Tyr-OH (28), was synthesized on an automated peptid...

Abstract. The energy of a molecular graph is a popular parameter that is defined as the sum of the absolute values of a graph’s eigenvalues. It is well known that the energy is related to the matching polynomial and thus also to the Hosoya index via a certain Coulson integral. Trees minimizing the energy under various additional conditions have been determined in the past, e.g., trees with a gi...