Stephen Kent (chemist)

Stephen B. H. Kent (born December 12, 1945, in Wellington, New Zealand) is a professor at the University of Chicago. While professor at the Scripps Research Institute in the early 1990s he pioneered modern ligation methods for the total chemical synthesis of proteins.[1][2] He was the inventor of native chemical ligation together with his student Philip Dawson.[3] His laboratory experimentally demonstrated the principle that chemical synthesis of a protein's polypeptide chain using mirror-image amino acids after folding results in a mirror-image protein molecule which, if an enzyme, will catalyze a chemical reaction with mirror-image stereospecificity.[4] At the University of Chicago Kent and his junior colleagues pioneered the elucidation of protein structures by quasi-racemic & racemic crystallography.[5]

  1. ^ Constructing proteins by dovetailing unprotected synthetic peptides: backbone engineered HIV protease. M. Schnölzer, S.B.H. Kent Science, 256, 221-225 (1992).
  2. ^ Moroder, Luis; Diederichsen, Ulf (May 2016). "Editorial: A Tribute to Stephen B. H. Kent: Towards a new world of proteins enabled by chemical synthesis". Journal of Peptide Science. 22 (5): 245. doi:10.1002/psc.2892. PMID 27160918. S2CID 206421504.
  3. ^ Synthesis of native proteins by chemical ligation. Dawson PE, Kent SB. Annu Rev Biochem. 2000;69:923-60.
  4. ^ Total chemical synthesis of a D-enzyme: the enantiomers of HIV-1 protease show reciprocal chiral substrate specificity [corrected]. Milton RC, Milton SC, Kent SB. Science. 1992 Jun 5;256(5062):1445-8
  5. ^ X-ray structure of snow flea antifreeze protein determined by racemic crystallization of synthetic protein enantiomers. Brad L. Pentelute, Zachary P. Gates, Valentina Tereshko, Jennifer Dashnau, Jane M. Vanderkooi, Anthony A. Kossiakoff, Stephen B. H. Kent, J Am Chem Soc, 130, 9695-9701 (2008); Chemical synthesis and X-ray structure of a heterochiral {D-protein antagonist plus vascular endothelial growth factor} protein complex by racemic crystallography. Mandal K, Uppalapati M, Ault-Riché D, Kenney J, Lowitz J, Sidhu SS, Kent SB. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Sep 11;109(37):14779-84.