The Effect of a Peptide Substrate Containing an Unnatural Branched Amino Acid on Chymotrypsin Activity

7-Amino-4-methylcoumarin (AMC) is a low molecular weight fluorescent probe that can be attached to a peptide to enable the detection of specific proteases, such as chymotrypsin, expressed in certain diseases. Because this detection depends on the specificity of the protease toward the peptidyl AMC, the development of specific substrates is required. To investigate the specificity of chymotrypsin, peptidyl AMC compounds incorporating four different amino acid residues were prepared by liquid-phase synthesis. Two unnatural amino acids, 2-amino-4-ethylhexanoic acid (AEH) and cyclohexylalanine (Cha), were used to investigate the substrate specificity as these amino acids have structures different from natural amino acids. AEH was synthesized using diethyl acetamidemalonate as a starting material. The substrate containing Cha had high hydrophobicity and showed a high reaction velocity with chymotrypsin. Although the AEH substrate with a branched side chain had high hydrophobicity, it showed a low reaction velocity. The substrate containing the aromatic amino acid phenylalanine was less hydrophobic than the Cha and AEH substrates, but chymotrypsin showed the highest specificity for this compound. These results demonstrated that the substrate specificity of chymotrypsin is not only affected by the hydrophobicity and aromaticity, but also by the structural expanse of amino acid residues in the substrate.