Synthetic peptides as binding-step based catalytic mimics.

Peptides able to adopt an environment-dependent secondary structure represent attractive models for enzyme mimics. An approach to design new synthetic enzyme-like peptides involves the use of binding-step based mimics. The polypeptide melittin, based on its intrinsic ability to bind to phospholipids, was selected as a potential binding-step based catalytic mimic. Synthetic melittin was found to exhibit weak but reproducible phospholipase-like activity. The rate enhancement of the hydrolysis of phospholipids, although far from that of the natural enzyme, was encouraging as a first step in the development of new catalytic peptides.