NEW DELHI: Researchers at IIT-Delhi have developed a visible light-driven chemical strategy to precisely synthesise unnatural amino acids (UAAs) and peptides, potentially opening new possibilities in medicine, biotechnology and advanced biomolecule design.
The IIT Delhi research team, led by Professor Ravi P Singh of the Department of Chemistry, sought to address a major challenge: producing a single enantiomer of an amino acid with high selectivity.
The researchers used visible light to drive chemical transformations, combined with a chiral copper catalyst-ligand system to control the three-dimensional outcome of the reactions. The approach starts with natural amino-acid building blocks and enables the introduction of chemical groups.
Amino acids are the fundamental building blocks of proteins. Most naturally occurring amino acids have a specific three-dimensional arrangement. The two mirror-image forms, or enantiomers, can behave very differently in biological systems. Unnatural amino acids are modified versions of these.
The researchers used visible light to drive chemical transformations, combined with a chiral copper catalyst-ligand system to control the three-dimensional outcome of the reactions. According to the team, the method produced 43 examples of UAAs and peptides, expanding the range of building blocks for creating novel biomolecules.