Engineering a Nano-factory for Peptide Synthesis

Peptides are short chains of simple chemical building blocks called amino acids. They are involved in numerous key biological processes including acting as toxins, pigments, drugs and hormones. They also control many of the most important cellular functions in animals, plants and man. There is considerable worldwide interest in developing new methods of producing peptides in sufficient quantity and of sufficent quality for use as pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals or reseach tools. The current favoured method for manufactoring peptides involves using chemical agents to fuse together the amino acid building blocks that form them. This approach is time-consuming, generates toxic waste products, and cannot be used for some valuable peptides. In this project, we will use an engineered peptide 'nano-factory' which when introduced into bacteria allows them to produce significant quantities of high value 'difficult' peptides without any of the problems associated with chemical synthesis.