Synthesis of peptides by solution methods

Peptides are essentially small version of proteins and the structure of pep tides is best described as a chain of amino acids linked to each other thro ugh amide bonds. In the chemical synthesis of peptides, two procedures are primarily used, although they are both based on fundamentally same principl es: one is a solution method and the other being a solid-phase method carri ed out on a resin. The chemistry of peptide synthesis was developed based o n the following basic chemical principles: 1) selection of protecting group s for amino acids and deprotection and 2) peptide bond formation. Therefore , studies on peptide synthesis in solution can be directly applied to solid -phase methodology. This review deals with the fundamental chemistry of pep tide synthesis in solution and considers the following points: (1) principl e of peptide synthesis, (2) protection procedures, (3) chain elongation pro cedures by either stepwise or segment condensation reactions and (4) final deprotection of protected peptides.