Development of a bacteriophage-based system for the selection of structured peptides

Short structured peptides can provide scaffolds for protease-resistant peptide therapeutics, serve as useful building blocks in biomedical and biotechnological applications, and shed light on the role of secondary structure elements in protein folding. It is well known that directed evolution is a powerful method for creating proteins and peptides with novel properties, and a system for the selection of short peptides based on structure from a randomized library would be an important advancement. In this study, phage particles monovalently displaying a short peptide and an N-terminal 6×His tag on their P3 coat protein were bound to nickel agarose resin and were subsequently challenged with a protease that specifically cleaves at a site within the peptide. The extent to which phage is proteolytically released from the resin was found to be dependent on the structural properties of the inserted peptide sequences. As proofs-of-concept, a structured peptide has been isolated from a pool of flexible peptides using a trypsin selection, and a flexible peptide has been isolated from a pool of structured peptides using a chymotrypsin selection. This selection system will be a strong technological platform for the creation of short peptides with interesting structural properties using directed evolution.