The
efficiency with which polycationic peptides penetrate the cytosol
depends on the number and overall patterning of arginine residues.
While general trends and unusually penetrant patterns of arginine
residues have been discovered, prior work has not effectively leveraged
high-throughput screens to measure cytosolic penetration rather than
total cell uptake. In this work, we adapted the chloroalkane penetration
assay, which exclusively measures cytosolic penetration, to screen
peptide libraries in a high-throughput, quantitative, and automation-ready
manner. We demonstrate the usefulness of the screening platform by
efficiently exploring how the number, patterning, and stereochemistry
of arginine residues affect the cytosolic penetration of a model 10-residue
peptide.