Antisense Peptide Technology for Diagnostic Tests and Bioengineering Research

• Main Authors: Nikola Štambuk, Paško Konjevoda, Josip Pavan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-08-01
• Series: International Journal of Molecular Sciences
• Subjects: antisense; complementary; peptide; binding; genetic code; technology
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/17/9106

Antisense peptide technology (APT) is based on a useful heuristic algorithm for rational peptide design. It was deduced from empirical observations that peptides consisting of complementary (sense and antisense) amino acids interact with higher probability and affinity than the randomly selected ones. This phenomenon is closely related to the structure of the standard genetic code table, and at the same time, is unrelated to the direction of its codon sequence translation. The concept of <i>complementary peptide interaction</i> is discussed, and its possible applications to diagnostic tests and bioengineering research are summarized. Problems and difficulties that may arise using APT are discussed, and possible solutions are proposed. The methodology was tested on the example of SARS-CoV-2. It is shown that the CABS-dock server accurately predicts the binding of antisense peptides to the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain without requiring predefinition of the binding site. It is concluded that the benefits of APT outweigh the costs of random peptide screening and could lead to considerable savings in time and resources, especially if combined with other computational and immunochemical methods.