Name peptide

"Name Peptide" is a term used to describe a sequence of English alphabet letters that simultaneously corresponds to (1) a personal or other name, and (2) a sequence of single letter, IUPAC-IUBMB, JCBN symbols for the names of amino acids (AAs) involved in an AA polymer containing less than 100 AAs, called a "peptide". An example of a "name peptide" is, "WIKIVERSITY", where the letter sequence simultaneously represents (1) the name of a Wikimedia Foundation project, and (2) a string of single letter symbols for the 11 AA peptide:

Tryptophan (W)-Isoleucine (I)-Lysine (K)-Isoleucine (I)-Valine (V)-Glutamic acid (E)-Arginine (R)-Serine (S)-Isoleucine (I)-Threonine (T)-Tyrosine (Y).

The hyphens between successive AAs in this polymer indicate covalent chemical bonds, called amide or peptide bonds.

The process of using a name, consisting of a string of English alphabet letters, to design an AA polymer containing less than 100 AAs, is called the "name-to-peptide method", and it was first described in 2003 (Reference 1). The resulting "name peptide" may, or may not be found in nature, and this can be determined by subjecting the AA sequence of the "name peptide" to a Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) search of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) protein database, which contains the AA sequences of tens of millions of naturally occurring proteins. For the "WIKIVERSITY" example above, a BLAST search of 20,400,525 AA sequences in the NCBI protein databases did not produce any exact matches, but partial matches were found in numerous proteins. For example, the AA sequence, "WIKIVE", a 54% match, occurs in a protein of Phytophthora infestans T30-4 (database reference ref|XP_002896495.1), and "VERSITY", a 64% match, occurs in a protein of Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato K40 (database reference ref|ZP_07254205.1). Although an exact match for "WIKIVERSITY" has not yet been found in nature, it is possible to create this "name peptide" by chemical synthesis, such as solid phase peptide synthesis, or the techniques of molecular biology. Due to the ubiquitous nature of peptides, and their role as essential elements in life processes (e.g., the hormone, insulin, is a 51 AA peptide that is involved in carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, and is associated with the disease, diabetes), it is highly probable that any peptide produced by the "name-to-peptide" method will be found to exhibit some form of biological activity.

The utility of the "name-to-peptide" method as a source of novel, potentially useful, peptides was tested in 2004 (Refs. 2, 3) and 2015 (Ref. 4). In the 2004 test, the name of US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was used to design a peptide, COLINPOWELL, where the letter, O, represented the AA, Ornithine, a structural analog of the amino acid, Lysine. The resulting "name peptide" was chemically synthesized, subjected to several biological and structural tests at institutions both in the USA and Europe, and found to have anticancer and immune stimulating properties. In the 2015 test, the well known name of a large, multinational company, Walmart, was used to design a peptide, WALMART. Upon testing, the peptide was found to exhibit anticancer properties. The method has also been used to design additional peptides corresponding to company, religious, and university names, and the personal names of billionaires (Refs. 5-10).

Due to the nontraditional nature of the "name-to-peptide" method (i.e, it is not based upon natural sources), it has not received extensive research interest. However, the method could provide (1) a virtually unlimited supply of novel peptides of potential biological and other interest, and (2) a way to increase the awareness of the general public in the field of peptide science.

References:

(Note: Wade Research Foundation Reports are indexed and abstracted in the EBSCO Academic Search Complete database.)

1. Wade, D., The name game: use of words composed of letters of the English alphabet as a source of novel bioactive peptides. Chemistry Preprint Archive (2003) 1: 159-170.

2. [http://wade-research.mynetworksolutions.com/images/WRF_Reports_2004_1_1_.pdf Wade, D., Yang, D., and Lea, M.A. Biological and structural properties of COLINPOWELL, a synthetic peptide amide. Wade Res. Found. Rep. (2004) 1: 2-35.]

3. Wade, D. The name game: use of words composed of letters of the English alphabet as a source of novel bioactive peptides, In Peptide Revolution: Genomics, Proteomics & Therapeutics, M. Chorev and T. K. Sawyer, eds., American Chemical Society, Cardiff, CA, USA, 2004, pp. 580-581.

4. [http://www.wade-research.mynetworksolutions.com/images/WRF_Reports__2015_7_1_.pdf Wade, D., and Lea, M.A. The WALMART peptide. Wade Res. Found. Rep. (2015) 7(1): 1-13.]

5. [http://wade-research.mynetworksolutions.com/images/WRF_Reports_2007_4_1_.pdf Wade, D. Peptides MICROSOFT, GOOGLE, YAHOO, COCACOLA and PEPSICOLA. Wade Res. Found. Rep. (2007) 4 (1): 1-16.]

6. [http://wade-research.mynetworksolutions.com/images/WRF_Reports_2007_4_2_.pdf Wade, D. The tetragrammaton peptides, YHWH and YHVH. Wade Res. Found. Rep. (2007) 4 (2): 1-6.]

7. [http://wade-research.mynetworksolutions.com/images/WRF_Reports_2007_4_4_.pdf Wade, D. The PRINCETON peptide. Wade Res. Found. Rep. (2007) 4 (4): 1-8.]

8. [http://wade-research.mynetworksolutions.com/images/WRF_Reports_2007_4_5_.pdf Wade, D. The KAROLINSKA peptide. Wade Res. Found. Rep. (2007) 4 (5): 1-7.]

9. [http://wade-research.mynetworksolutions.com/images/WRF_Reports_2010_5_2_.pdf Wade, D. Four billionaire name peptides that contain the CendR motif. Wade Res. Found. Rep. (2010) 5 (2): 1-23.]

10. [http://wade-research.mynetworksolutions.com/images/WRF_Reports_2010_5_3_.pdf Wade, D. Searching for Amelia Earhart at the Molecular Level:  Peptide AMELIAEAR-HART  Wade Res. Found. Rep. (2010) 5 (3): 1-15.]