In nature, dehydroalanine (Dha) and dehydrobutyrine (Dhb) residues are byproducts of protein aging, intermediates in the biosynthesis of lanthipeptides and products of bacterial phospholyases that inactivate host kinase immune responses. Recent chemical biology studies have demonstrated the possibility of mapping dehydroamino acids in complex proteomes in an unbiased manner that could further our understanding of the role of Dha and Dhb in biology and disease more broadly. From a synthetic perspective, chemical mutagenesis through site-selective formation of the unsaturated residue and subsequent addition chemistry has yielded homogeneous proteins bearing a variety of post-translational modifications (PTMs) which have assisted fundamental biological research. This Opinion discusses these recent advances and presents new opportunities for protein engineering and drug discovery.

中文翻译：

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脱氢氨基酸化学生物学：蛋白质官能团相互转换的一个例子

在自然界中，脱氢丙氨酸 (Dha) 和脱氢丁氨酸 (Dhb) 残基是蛋白质老化的副产物，是羊毛脂肽生物合成的中间体，以及使宿主激酶免疫反应失活的细菌磷酸化酶的产物。最近的化学生物学研究证明了以无偏见的方式绘制复杂蛋白质组中脱氢氨基酸的可能性，这可以进一步加深我们对 Dha 和 Dhb 在生物学和疾病中的作用的更广泛理解。从合成的角度来看，通过不饱和残基的位点选择性形成和随后的加成化学的化学诱变产生了带有各种翻译后修饰 (PTM) 的均质蛋白质，这有助于基础生物学研究。