Total chemical synthesis provides a unique approach for the access to uncontaminated, monodisperse, and more importantly, post-translationally modified membrane proteins.
Recently, a practical procedure for expedient and cost-effective synthesis of small to medium-sized membrane proteins in multi-milligram scale was developed through the use of automated Fmoc chemistry. The research was made by Ji-Shen ZHENG associate professor and his colleagues in High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Chinese Academy of sciences(CHMFL).
The efficiency and practicality of the new method is demonstrated by the successful preparation of Ser64-phosphorylated M2 proton channel from influenza A virus and the membrane-embedded domain of an inward rectifier K+ channel protein Kir5.1.
Besides, functional characterizations of these chemically synthesized membrane proteins using single-channel recording indicate that its provide useful and otherwise-difficult-to-access materials for biochemistry and biophysics studies.
The research results entitled “Expedient Total Synthesis of Small to Medium-Sized Membrane Proteins via Fmoc Chemistry” was accepted by J Am Chem Soc (DOI: 10.1021/ja500222u).
(http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja500222u)
 

Total chemical synthesis of transmembrane ion channels and its signle-channel recording