Here we describe the application of photochemical decarboxylative
arylation as a late-stage functionalization reaction for peptides.
The reaction uses redox-active esters of aspartic acid and glutamic
acid on the solid phase to provide analogues of aromatic amino acids.
By using aryl bromides as arylation reagents, a wide variety of amino
acids can be accessed without having to synthesize them individually
in solution. The reaction is compatible with proteinogenic amino acids
and was used to perform a structure–activity relationship study
of a PRMT5 binding peptide.