Abstract
THE recent synthesis of polypeptides from given amino-acids by Woodward and Schramm1, following the neglected Leuchs polymerization2, has reopened a promising line of attack on the problem of protein structure. Comparison of the properties of such synthetic polypeptides of known composition with those of proteins built of the same amino-acids should prove of great value, and in particular should help considerably in the interpretation of X-ray and infra-red data, which are still so imperfectly understood owing to the complexity of even the simplest protein. The general object of the work of which the preliminary findings are summarized below is therefore to synthesize as many as possible, first of homogeneous polypeptides (that is, those containing a single amino-acid species) and secondly of copolymers of two or more amino-acids, and then, by X-ray, infra-red and accessory techniques, to study their properties in relation to those of proteins of analogous composition.
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References
Woodward, R. B., and Schramm, C. H., J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 69, 1551 (1947).
Leuchs et al., Ber., 39, 857 (1906); 40, 3235 (1907); 41, 1721 (1908).
Meyer, K. H., and Go, Y., Helv. Chim. Acta, 17, 1488 (1934).
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Brown, C. J., Coleman, D., and Farthing, A. C. (in the press).
See, for example, Astbury, W. T., Croonian Lecture, 1945, Proc. Roy. Soc., B, 134, 303 (1947); also many communications to Nature.
Astbury, W. T., and Bell, F. O., Nature, 147, 696 (1941).
Darmon, S. E., and Sutherland, G. B. B. M., J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 69, 2074 (1947).
Astbury, W. T., Reed, R., and Spark, L. C., Biochem. J., (in the press).
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ASTBURY, W., DALGLIESH, C., DARMON, S. et al. Studies of the Structure of Synthetic Polypeptides. Nature 162, 596–600 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162596a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162596a0
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