elmernag01: Unnatural amino acids combine with HGH to make for better therapy

Monday, May 23, 2011

Unnatural amino acids combine with HGH to make for better therapy

The universal genetic code allows for 20 amino acids to be used in proteins. They can be smaller, bigger, acidic, basic, polar, nonpolar, linear, or with rings—but there are only 20. Of course there are plenty of other amino acids that can be synthesized, but DNA cannot instruct cells to put them into proteins.

Or at least it couldn’t until 2001, when researchers at The Scripps Institute in La Jolla published a paper, entitled "Expanding the genetic code of Escherishia coli," in Science. They described the creation of a unique tRNA/aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase enzyme pair that incorporated a synthetic amino acid into proteins in bacteria. Similar feats have since been accomplished in eukaryotic and mammalian cells, and a new report in PNAS uses the technique to make a modified protein with clinical relevance: human growth hormone (hGH).