Towards peptide-binding peptides

Peptide-binding peptides can be a very powerful research tool. A novel methodology, based on the mechanism of bacteriophage l switch in E. coli and combinatorial screening, has been developed to isolate peptides that bind another target peptide in vivo. Two pairs of interacting peptides have been isolated and characterized. One of the potential applications of such peptide-binding peptides is to be utilized as protein purification tags. Another novel aspect of this research is that a candidate peptide is able to inhibit an enzyme-catalyzed protein hydrolysis by binding specifically to a peptide sequence on the substrate which is recognized by the protease. In other words, a novel concept of substrate-directed enzyme inhibitors has been developed.