I have some questions for the synthetic experts out there. The last two peptides
we've made have totally bombed. We're seeing an incredible amount of resin
capping. I blamed the first failure on the presence of water in the HOBt/HBTU
bottle or the DIEA bottle (both were changed just prior to synthesis). I remade
the solutions with new dry bottles and the second synthesis was even worse. The
good news is that we're incorporating a Lys(Dnp) residue so I can tell by
looking at the resin that something went awry (not yellow enough). The bad news
is that I can't tell from the monitor trace that there is a problem. A very
small portion of the resin is synthesized to completion (as verified by MS).
My questions are:
1) Am I wrong in thinking that water did this? Could it be something else?
2) We've opened no new reagents lately, so my guess is that something has gone
bad. What is the most likely culprit? Our HOBt is the oldest, with HBTU second.
The pip and DIEA are turned over so often they're never more than a month or two
old.
Thanks in advance for your assistance.
Jeni
Janelle Lauer-Fields
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
Florida Atlantic University
777 Glades Road
Boca Raton, Florida 33431
561-297-2094/Fax 561-297-2759