Site-selective solid phase synthesis of carbonylated peptides

The aim of our research was to design an efficient method for the solid phase synthesis of carbonylated peptides. For this purpose, we designed and synthesized a fully protected derivative Fmoc-amino(2,5,5-trimetyhyl-1,3-dioxolan-2-yl)acetic acid (Fmoc-Atda-OH) of a novel unnatural amino acid (Thr(O)-2-amino-3-oxo-butanoic acid). To obtain the mentioned derivative, two synthetic strategies were investigated using different reagents for carbonyl protection, ethane-1,2-diol and 2,2-dimethyl-propane-1,3-diol. The racemization of oxidized threonine was also analyzed and discussed. We successfully carried out the solid phase synthesis of peptides containing a Thr(O) moiety using Fmoc-Atda-OH according to the standard Fmoc strategy. The application of the designed building block allows the synthesis of peptides containing D,L-Thr(O) residue, which may be used as models of oxidatively modified peptides which occur in biological systems and are related to many diseases. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00726-015-1967-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.