Large-pore polydimethylacrylamide resin for solid-phase peptide synthesis: Applications in Fmoc chemistry

We have synthesized a hydrophilic, crosslinked, aminoalkyl polydimethylacrylamide-beaded support upon which peptides have been assembled using standard Fmoc chemistry in automated batch-wise equipment. The resin was prepared by the free radical-initiated co-polymerization of N,N-dimethylacrylamide, N,N'-bisacrylyl-1,3-diaminopropane and a functional monomer, N-methacrylyl-1,3-diaminopropane hydrochloride. After coupling of N-α-tert-butyloxycarbonyl-glycine (Bocglycine), amino acid analyses gave resin loading capacities of 0.66 mmol/g. The resulting polymer was highly swollen by polar solvents including aqueous buffers and had an exclusion limit of 50 kDa for soluble proteins. This resin was found to be an excellent support for peptide synthesis using Fmoc chemistry. Typical purities of crude peptides were 80%-95%, including sequences that failed on conventional polystyrene resins.