Conjugation of Amphiphilic Proteins to Hydrophobic Ligands in Organic Solvent
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- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Academia Sinica, Taipei (Taiwan). Inst. of Chemistry
- Univ. of New England, Biddeford, MA (United States). Dept. of Chemistry and Physics
- Southern Univ. of Science and Technology, Shenzhen (China). Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
Protein–ligand conjugations are usually carried out in aqueous media in order to mimic the environment within which the conjugates will be used. Here, we focus on the conjugation of amphiphilic variants of elastin-like polypeptide (ELP), short elastin (sEL), to poorly water-soluble compounds like OPPVs (p-phenylenevinylene oligomers), triarylamines, and polypyridine-metal complexes. These conjugations are problematic when carried out in aqueous phase because hydrophobic ligands tend to avoid exposure to water, which in turn causes the ligand to self-aggregate and/or interact noncovalently with hydrophobic regions of the amphiphile. Ultimately, this behavior leads to low conjugation efficiency and contamination with strong noncovalent “conjugates”. After exploring the solubility of sEL in various organic solvents, we have established an efficient conjugation methodology for obtaining covalent conjugates virtually free of contaminating noncovalent complexes. When conjugating carboxylated ligands to the amphiphile amines, we demonstrate that even when only one amine (the N-terminus) is present, its derivatization is 98% efficient. When conjugating amine moieties to the amphiphile carboxyls (a problematic configuration), protein multimerization is avoided, 98–100% of the protein is conjugated, and the unreacted ligand is recovered in pure form. Our syntheses occur in “one pot”, and our purification procedure is a simple workup utilizing a combination of water and organic solvent extractions. This conjugation methodology might provide a solution to problems arising from solubility mismatch of protein and ligand, and it is likely to be widely applied for modification of recombinant amphiphiles used for drug delivery (PEG-antibodies, polymer-enzymes, food proteins), cell adhesion (collagen, hydrophobins), synthesis of nanostructures (peptides), and engineering of biocompatible optoelectronics (biological polymers), to cite a few.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Scientific User Facilities Division; USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1461400
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-18-21399
- Journal Information:
- Bioconjugate Chemistry, Vol. 29, Issue 8; ISSN 1043-1802
- Publisher:
- American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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