An Automatic Apparatus for the Synthesis of Peptides Using Resin Coated Glass Beads in the Form of a Packed Bed

Abstract

An apparatus is described that will automatically synthesize peptides containing up to 10 amino acids before recharging the apparatus with reagents. The process employed is similar to the solid state synthesis of peptides devised by Merrifield (1) but uses resin coated glass beads in the form of a packed bed instead of solid resin beads in a shaker vessel. The apparatus is constructed from readily available chromatographic equipment and has a capacity, depending on the column employed, ranging from 10 to 1400 gm of resin coated beads. Such a range of bed capacity will provide from 0.1 m mole to 25 m mole of polypeptide. The apparatus has been used to synthesize automatically L-leucyl-L-alanyl-glycly-L-valine. Replicate synthesis using 40 gm of resin coated beads demonstrated that the apparatus could produce the tetrapeptide at an average purity of 97.7% and provide a yield of about 250 mg of the tetrapeptide. By simple modification the maximum chain length of the peptide that would be synthesized can be increased to twenty amino acids before recharging the apparatus with fresh reagents becomes necessary.