Team:Freiburg

Judging Form  
Achievements
Software
Model

Click/Touch anywhere to skip the introduction...

All living things are built of the same building blocks, among which amino acids. Amino acids exist in two forms, L- and D-form, yet only L- amino acids are used by ribosomes to make proteins.

Have you ever thought about what would happen if peptides and proteins were made of D-amino acids? Or if one could incorporate a D-amino acid in an L-protein?

New avenues would be possible! Amazing new properties would be acquired!

Being naturally absent from proteins, D-amino acids artificially incorporated at specific sites in a protein would render it more thermostable, would slow down its proteolytic degradation and may change its functionality all together.

D-peptides used as drugs would not be recognized by the cellular machineries, thus would resist the attack of proteases and the immune system.

Doesn't it sound fantastic?!?

But...how can we make D-peptides?

How can we incorporate a D-amino acid in a protein?

Let us show you how

Dive with us into the fascinating world of Mirror-Image Phage Display You'll learn the trick that can be applied to find D-peptides that bind a specific target

We will bring you with us in the chemistry lab, where you will synthesize your very own D-peptide following our instructions.

And if you worry about the costs of buying the D-amino acids, we'll reassure you with our racemase, that can turn your L-amino acid into D-form

So you are not that much into chemistry? No worries! We've got some E. coli, too

A very special strain, where fancy liquid droplets encapsulate ribosomes, tRNA synthetases, tRNAs and mRNAs to let that D-amino acid of yours get into your favorite protein - oh well, at least we designed it to do this, but it may require some more training...

You don't like bacteria, either? Ok! We still got you!

You ought to love our computational modeling, which culminated in a software that makes your search of a D-peptide binder way easier - FinDr finds it for you. Nice and dry. No need to put gloves on.

You wonder right now...yeah, pretty cool, but where is the application??

You surely don't want to get that nasty methicilin-resistance Staphylococcus aureus damage the cells in your body with its toxin PSMα3, do you?

We have it under control! We applied Mirror-image phage display (in the lab and in the computer) and came up with some good sequences that reduce the toxicity of PSMα3.

And the good news are...that being D-peptides, they have way better chances of working for real!

We know that we convinced you. Now jump into Description and read all about it!