Saturday, December 21, 2013

Understanding Custom Peptides

By Armand Zeiders


All throughout the world, scientists engage in studies on peptides, and custom peptide synthesis is a service provided to help them with their research. Medical studies and also biological research are done by these scientists and the custom peptides are those they use in the studies. There are various reasons that the custom peptides are important to scientists, and these peptides are also created in the biotechnology laboratories. Read on to learn more about these custom synthetic peptides.

Understanding peptides in general is basic biology. These are just a short chain of amino acids which bond together to form peptides. Those chains containing 50 or less amino acids are called peptides, and the long chains of amino acids are what we call proteins. Amino acids are organic compounds that are important for the human body to function properly and there are about 500 various kinds of these amino acids. Some essential amino acids can be produced by the body and others we must receive from various food sources.

The synthesis or creation of peptides is the process wherein these peptides are produced. This is a process naturally occurring in the human body though, and scientists can study this but it is also very expensive for the research studies so often custom synthetic peptides are used in the studies. This creation of the custom synthetic peptides is quite difficult and time consuming however, and the laboratories often outsource this production to the biotechnology companies.

There are also various reasons that the study of peptides is of good help to scientists worldwide. Studying the function and also structure of different kinds of proteins is done by scientists and researchers, as well as the study of peptides. Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia for instance, are studied by scientists, and they are hoping that they can make advances of this through the study of proteins and peptides since they believe that human disorders and diseases happen because of problems with proteins in the body.

A type of peptide known as an inhibitory peptide is being studied currently because some scientists believe that these peptides might be able to inhibit certain cancer proteins. This ultimately could be used to kill cancer cells and hopefully without the side effects associated with other types of cancer treatments, such as radiation and chemotherapy.

Production of vaccines and other diagnostic tests also can be aided by studying these synthetic custom peptides. Scientists believe that understanding the molecular structures of amino acids, the proteins and peptides; this will ultimately make them be able to isolate easily and also solve the medical problems of people, and ultimately bring them the healthier, happier, and fulfilled people throughout the world.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment