Using surface plasmon resonance to directly identify molecules in a tripeptide library that bind tightly to a vancomycin chip

This paper describes a procedure, based on direct binding, for identifying tight-binding ligands for a receptor immobilized on a sensor chip from an array of equimolar tripeptides using surface plasmon resonance. Vancomycin and a library of 96 tripeptides, with molecular weight ranging from 316 to 560 Da, were used as a model system to illustrate the procedure. A consensus structure of the strongest interacting peptides consisted of d-Ala at the C terminus and aromatic amino acid in the penultimate position. Ligands having this structure bound more tightly to vancomycin than the known d-Ala-d-Ala peptide. The throughput of our continuous assay is 96 compounds in 3.3 h, and the sample consumption is less than 2 μg per peptide and 1 ng for vancomycin. This procedure should be applicable to peptide libraries of greater complexity than that used here and to mixtures of small organic compounds.