Synthesis of prothymosin alpha deduced from nucleotide sequence of the murine cDNA and its effect on the impaired T lymphocytes of uremic patients.
Abiko. T T; Sekino. H H
Key Findings
- Full-length prothymosin alpha (110 amino acids) was chemically synthesized with a low overall yield (<1%).
- When mixed with peripheral blood from uremic patients, the synthetic peptide restored low‑E‑rosette‑forming lymphocyte activity.
- The restoring effect was markedly stronger than that observed with synthetic thymosin‑alpha‑1.
Practical Outcomes
- The study suggests prothymosin alpha might be a more potent immune‑support peptide than thymosin‑alpha‑1, but because it was only tested in vitro and the peptide is hard to produce, there’s no clear dosage or protocol for self‑use. Biohackers should view this as an interesting lead that needs more human research before it can be applied safely.
Summary
Scientists made the full mouse version of prothymosin alpha in the lab and found that, when added to blood cells from kidney‑failure patients, it helped restore a type of immune cell activity better than the shorter peptide thymosin‑alpha‑1. However, the synthesis was inefficient and the work was only done in a test‑tube, not in real people.
Abstract
The complete murine prothymosin alpha molecule (110 residues) except for the N-terminal methionine deduced from the cloned cDNA has been synthesized by a solid-phase method. Peptide synthesis was performed manually by the stepwise solid-phase method using the base-labile Fmoc group for protecting the alpha-amino group. The peptide was assembled on a p-alkoxybenzyl alcohol resin. After the last coupling step, the Fmoc group was removed with 50% piperidine in DMF. The peptide resin was treated with thioanisole-o-cresol in TFA, and then purified by gel filtration, ion-exchange column chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography. A 2.9-mg sample of a highly purified peptide was finally obtained. The overall yield of the synthesis was less than 1%, based on the amino acid content of the starting Fmoc-Asp (OtBu)-resin. The synthetic peptide was found to have a restoring activity on low-E-rosette-forming lymphocytes after incubation of peripheral blood from uremic patients with the synthetic peptide. This peptide exhibited far stronger restoring effect than that of our synthetic thymosin alpha 1.
Study Information
pubmed
1993