UNNATURAL AMINO ACID (UAA's)

 ....................................CONCEPT OF UNNATURAL AMINO ACID....................


In several fields of chemistry, amino acids have long been crucial. Naturally, only 20 amino acids are used, but even a little alteration to one of these amino acids has resulted in an amazing diversity in terms of chemical structure and function. The likelihood of novel drugs, hormones, and enzymes originating from non-proteogenic unnatural amino acids is fast rising along with their abundance.

To put it simply, unnatural amino acids are non-proteinogenic amino acids, meaning they don't belong to the 20 amino acids that are attached to tRNAs in living cells and used to polymerize proteins.

While some synthetic amino acids are produced artificially, most are produced chemically. Citrulline is a good example of a non-proteinogenic amino acid that the body can produce by oxidising arginine, whereas p-benzoyl-phenylalanine is a good example of an amino acid that doesn't exist at all in nature.


BIOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF UNNATURAL AMINO ACID

1.      In the development of drug, Unnatural amino acids are used to increase the chemical, physical as well as pharmaceutical properties of the lead . For e.g.,

                            

     

                        Citrulline                                                                Naphtylalanine

                                                  Structure of  Unnatural amino acids

2.      Unnatural amino acids are becoming vital tool in discovery of drug and research. Because of their diversity in structure and versatile nature , the have been widely used as chiral building blocks and molecular scaffolds in construction of combinatorial libraries (Ma J S , 2003).

3.      These have found an increase in advantage as they offer much better stability, enhanced potency, better oral adsorption, improved tissue distribution , increase biological response selectivity. Thus, incorporation and modification has been interesting. E.g. a cyclic tetrapeptid synthesized having some same biological activity as that of somatostatine , an important endogenous neurotransmitter .


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