A New Biological Ruler Toolkit: The BDP-A Chemical Crosslinker with Biotin Handle Allows for Modular Crosslinker Synthesis and Protein Interaction Studies

This thesis details the synthesis of the BDP-A crosslinker as well as how this synthesis toolkit can be used to synthesize novel crosslinkers. In this research, BDP-A was successfully synthesized and used to characterize interactions between various peptides. This methodology used a microwave peptide synthesizer in addition to biochemical and organic synthesis techniques. Each synthesis step was confirmed using mass spectrometry. A novel crosslinker based off of the BDP-A model known as the PCA crosslinker was partially synthesized using this method. The PCA crosslinker uses a 2-pyridinylcarboxyaldehyde functional group such that it exclusively targets the N-terminus of proteins and therefore is tailored to exclusively characterize intercrosslinks between complexed proteins.