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Natural products

Getting a handle on peptides

Enhancing the structural diversity of peptide natural products relies on synthetic modifications that are typically not chemo- or regioselective. A nonribosomal peptide synthetase has now been engineered to incorporate a non-natural amino acid containing a reactive bio-orthogonal handle.

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Figure 1: Biosynthesis of diketopiperazines (DKPs) using the wild-type or Trp239Ser-engineered nonribosomal peptide synthetase modules GrsA or TycA.

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Correspondence to Jaclyn M. Winter or Yi Tang.

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Winter, J., Tang, Y. Getting a handle on peptides. Nature Chem 6, 1037–1038 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2117

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