Protein-templated peptide ligation.

Molecular templates bind particular reactants, thereby increasing their effective concentrations and accelerating the corresponding reaction. This concept has been successfully applied to a number of chemical problems with a strong focus on nucleic acid templated reactions. We present the first protein-templated reaction that allows N-terminal linkage of two peptides. In the presence of a protein template, ligation reactions were accelerated by more than three orders of magnitude. The templated reaction is highly selective and proved its robustness in a protein-labeling reaction that was performed in crude cell lysate.