Growing peptides in Flare
Designing and optimizing peptide sequences for targeted drug development using Flare
21 Aug 2023Product news
Therapeutic peptides are a class of pharmaceutical agent composed of a series of well-ordered amino acids usually having the molecular weight between 500-5000 Da. The discovery of several lifesaving bioactive peptides like the 51-amino acid hormone insulin, and the 39-amino acid adrenocorticotrophic hormone are considered important scientific achievements in drug discovery. A good peptide editor is one of the important tools for researchers and scientists working in the field of peptide design and drug development.
The peptide editor in Flare™ allows researchers to design and modify peptide sequences. It provides a user-friendly interface to input amino acid sequences and visualize the resulting peptide. This is crucial for designing peptides with specific functionality such as binding to a target protein or exhibiting therapeutic properties. Additionally, the peptide editor helps users to optimize several properties of peptides like solubility, stability, and bioavailability. By adjusting the sequence or modifying specific amino acids, researchers can enhance desired characteristics and minimize undesirable ones.
The peptide editor option is available in the ‘Editing’ tab in Flare. The ‘Grow Peptide’ button contains the peptide editing functionality. Selecting the ‘Grow Peptide’ button will open a pop-up window where the amino acid sequence of the desired peptide can be typed or pasted. The amino acid is depicted using the 1-letter code. If a new editing session is started the peptide is created as an independent fragment; if a protein structure or an amino acid sequence is instead being edited, and the current selection includes the C-terminus, then the peptide is appended to the terminus.