Site-selective bioconjugation is a powerful tool with a broad range of applications in both the biological, medicinal, electrochemical, and analytical fields. Bioconjugation is the coupling between a macro-molecule and a smaller compound. Installation of unnatural amino acids into a protein is both expensive, time-consuming and may change the properties of the protein. However, is it a challenge to obtain selective in a protein containing 300 amino acids as there is only have 21 amino acids to choose from and therefore a protein contains many copies of each amino acid. In this work, two novel strategies for site-selective bioconjugation are presented, which utilize the high phosphorylation specificity provided by a kinase enzyme.
The environmental crisis in modern society makes it relevant to develop new greener methods for energy harvesting. In the second half of this work, the development of an efficient organic molecular electron bridge is presented, which allows connection of the protein to the electrode while ensuring efficient electron-transfer. Through site-selective bioconjugation the orientation of the protein can be controlled, which is of high importance for the overall electron transfer rate.
