Development of a system for the design and synthesis of tailor-made peptides for the treatment of polymers prior to plastic metallization, highlight presentation Euromat 2021

Increasing demands in environmental protection and environmentally friendly solutions are important market drivers for the development of sustainable chemicals. Chromium (VI) is used in electroplating technology to pretreat polymers in order to achieve good metallization. However, it´s applications of now require special permits. This is an EU strategy to prevent the use of dangerous and unhealthy Reduce substances. Finding replacements with conventional chemicals is increasingly difficult. In order to change the chemistry and microstructure of polymer surfaces at suitable temperatures and process times, very reactive chemicals are required, which pose a high risk. Currently available alternative chromium (VI) -free technologies for polymer preconditioning have not yet been able to meet the industrial requirements.
One strategy to solve this problem is to focus on very specific and selective reactions. The main aim of this work is to develop a biological system that enables the development and synthesis of tailor-made, selective polymer-binding peptides. The system is based on what is known as phage display technology (PSD).
PSD generally uses a library of about 109 phages with various peptides fused to the phage coat proteins. All the phages in the library are unique. Phage particles are incubated with the substrate (polymer) in three biopanning cycles. Only a few phages bind to surfaces or via their envelope peptides particles, most have no affinity and will not bind. Unbound phage particles are removed when the target materials are washed. Finally, the attached phage particles are eluted. The eluted phage are amplified and purified in Escherichia coli cells. After the last cycle of biopanning, there are only a few individual phages left that have exceptionally high surface affinity. The phage particles are used for subsequent sequencing, modification and application.
The peptides that are expressed by the selected phages are then characterized with regard to their sequence, their binding motif and their interaction with the target material.
In parallel, new, improved and adapted phage libraries are constructed that minimize the proportion of wild-type phages. These constructed libraries are used for further biopanning experiments and the results are compared with commercial libraries.