Oxidation of Amino Acids in Proteins and Peptides

The modification of amino acids in proteins and peptides by oxidative processes plays a major role in the development of disease and in aging (Halliwell and Gutteridge, 1989, 1990 Kim et al., 1985 Tabor and Richardson, 1987 Stadtman, 1992). Tissue damage through free radical oxidation is known to cause various cancers, neurological degenerative conditions, pulmonary problems, inflammation, cardiovascular disease, and a host of other problems. Oxidation of protein structures can alter activity, inhibit normal protein interactions, modify amino acid side chains, cleave peptide bonds, and even cause crosslinks to form between proteins. 

From a broader perspective, protein oxidation can result in covalent modification at many sites other than just at cysteine thiols. The earliest reports on protein oxidation date from the first decade of the twentieth century, but it took many more years to characterize these reactions and their products (Dakin, 1906). 

The significance of protein oxidation became paramount with the advent of recombinant protein biologies used as human therapeutics. Careful characterization of protein stability is essential to maintaining the efficacy of protein pharmaceuticals. If even a single side chain amino acid residue becomes oxidized, then a protein therapeutic may not have the same activity in vivo as the unmodified protein. 

Singlet oxygen C ) differs from the predominant oxygen molecule in that O2 is in the ground state or triplet state and its outer two unshared electrons have parallel spins (sometimes designated 302), which is nearly unreactive toward other molecules, while singlet oxygen 

The reactive oxygen species involved with protein oxidation can be generally categorized according to their relative reactivity as follows  

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