Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Progress Toward Controlled Disulfide Formation To Access Neuroactive Conotoxins, Thilini Kondasinghe

Wayne State University Dissertations

"Conotoxins are mini proteins isolated from marine snails of the Conus family. They have shown activity in the selective inhibition of various ion channels. Therefore, they present an opportunity as possible therapy for a myriad of neurological ailments. The synthesis of conotoxins would enable both biological studies and evaluation of these structures as lead targets for therapeutics. However, establishing a reliable method to consistently folding disulfide rich proteins, including conotoxin, into their native structure has been challenging over few decades. In this research project, it is shown the progress towards a mild, efficient, and broadly applicable methods to generate the …