january, 2025
Event Details
Dr. Peter ‘t Hart from the Chemical Genomics Centre, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology and BioMedizinZentrum Dortmund will held a talk about “Peptides in Action: Advancing Late-Stage Functionalization Techniques and Targeting RNA-Binding Proteins” during the MBExC Lecture in cooperation with the OC Colloquium on 8 January, 2025 at 17:15 p.m. at the lecture hall MN29 (room no. E.1.111) at the Faculty of Chemistry, Tammannstr. 4, 37077 Göttingen.
Abstract:
Peptides are versatile ligands with the capacity to bind challenging targets with high affinity. In my presentation I will present an overview of different project in our group. In the first part I will discuss our work to streamline the introduction of unnatural amino acids into peptides by applying late-stage functionalization protocols. These methods use proteinogenic amino acids and convert them into varied unnatural amino acids by photochemical replacement of the functional group. In a second part of my talk I will discuss how we apply synthetic peptides to target RNA-binding proteins. In particular I will discuss our work on modulating the removal of poly(A) tails (deadenylation) from mRNA by targeting the CCR4-NOT complex subunit CNOT9. To do so, we developed a stabilized helical peptide that can block deadenylation in vitro. After further optimization steps, the cell premeability of the peptide was improved which allowed inhibition of deadenylation in HeLa cells.
Host: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Nadja A. Simeth-Crespi, University of Göttingen
Poster of the talk: 
