Amide Bond Activation of Biological Molecules

Abstract

Amide bonds are the most prevalent structures found in organic molecules and various biomolecules such as peptides, proteins, DNA, and RNA. The unique feature of amide bonds is their ability to form resonating structures, thus, they are highly stable and adopt particular three-dimensional structures, which, in turn, are responsible for their functions. The main focus of this review article is to report the methodologies for the activation of the unactivated amide bonds present in biomolecules, which includes the enzymatic approach, metal complexes, and non-metal based methods. This article also discusses some of the applications of amide bond activation approaches in the sequencing of proteins and the synthesis of peptide acids, esters, amides, and thioesters.

Deep Functional Profiling Facilitates the Evaluation of the Antibacterial Potential of the Antibiotic Amicoumacin

“…Hence, AmiC lactone acts as an improvised intermediate state, substantially decreasing the energetic barrier of amide hydrolysis. We suppose this self-lactonization step provides the main contribution to Ami instability, decreasing its half-life from years, as reported for other terminal amides [22], to less than 2 h at pH 8 and 37 • C. The observed pH dependence indicates the potential impact of the Ami amine group on self-lactonization. This amine group has an estimated pKa of~7.2.…”

Preparation and Photosynthesis-Inhibiting Activity of Novel Dihalogenated 3-Hydroxynaphthalene-2-carboxanilides

“…The presence of an amide (-CONH-) group in the structure of compounds enables interaction with various enzymatic systems [1][2][3][4] and is also characteristic for a number of herbicides acting as inhibitors of photosynthesis [5][6][7][8][9]. Although at present approximately 20 modes of action of herbicides are known [10], over 50% of commercially available herbicides act by reversible binding to photosystem II (PS II) [11], and due to this interaction, the photosynthetic electron transport (PET) is interrupted [12][13][14][15][16].…”

Investigation of Anti-Inflammatory Potential of N-Arylcinnamamide Derivatives

“…CA and its natural and synthetic derivatives possess many interesting biological effects, such as antimicrobial [12,13], anticancer [14], anti-oxidant [13], and anti-inflammatory activities [15].N-Arylcinnamides represent a group of synthetic derivatives of CA. This group of compounds possesses several potentially active moieties-styryl, amide (peptide-like [16]) bond, and aryl [17][18][19][20][21][22]. Thus, cinnamides can be considered as a privilege structure or a scaffold (a part) of more complex molecules in medicinal chemistry [23,24] The series of N-arylcinnamide derivatives presented in this work was previously tested for their anti-microbial activity (compounds 1-15 and 17) [25,26], and three new derivatives 16 and 18 were prepared and characterized.…”