ARTICLE https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16359-6 OPEN A cysteine selenosulfide redox switch for protein chemical synthesis Vincent Diemer1, Nathalie Ollivier1, Bérénice Leclercq1, Hervé Drobecq1, Jérôme Vicogne 1, ✉ ✉ Vangelis Agouridas 1 & Oleg Melnyk 1 The control of cysteine reactivity is of paramount importance for the synthesis of proteins using the native chemical ligation (NCL) reaction. We report that this goal can be achieved in 1234567890():,; a traceless manner during ligation by appending a simple N-selenoethyl group to cysteine. While in synthetic organic chemistry the cleavage of carbon-nitrogen bonds is notoriously difficult, we describe that N-selenoethyl cysteine (SetCys) loses its selenoethyl arm in water under mild conditions upon reduction of its selenosulfide bond. Detailed mechanistic investigations show that the cleavage of the selenoethyl arm proceeds through an anionic mechanism with assistance of the cysteine thiol group. The implementation of the SetCys unit in a process enabling the modular and straightforward assembly of linear or backbone cyclized polypeptides is illustrated by the synthesis of biologically active cyclic hepatocyte growth factor variants. 1 Univ. Lille, CNRS, Inserm, CHU Lille, Institut Pasteur de Lille, U1019-UMR 9017-CIIL-Center for Infection and Immunity of Lille, 59000 Lille, France. ✉ email:
[email protected];
[email protected] NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | (2020) 11:2558 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16359-6 | www.nature.com/naturecommunications 1 ARTICLE NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16359-6 n recent years, the study of protein function has made tre- assembly, embedding the Cys thiol in a cyclic dichalcogenide mendous advances thanks to the development of chemical represents a feasible solution as such species are known to be I 16 synthetic tools and strategies for producing peptides and significantly less oxidizing than their linear counterparts .