Solid phase amino acid protection, peptide construction and synthetic peptide use in defining protein stabilities, functions and in identifying contributing residues of enzymatic active sites

Chapter I of this dissertation, gives an over all literature review of solid phase peptide chemistry, examples of commonly used construction protocols and a brief overview of the kinds of research which have been made possible by the availability of synthetic peptides.; Chapter II presents a completed manuscript detailing the use of N α-Bpoc amino acids in SPPS. Including the preparation, purification and characterization of these amino acids.; Chapter III describes the relative hydrophobicities of constructed pentapeptides and evaluates near neighbor effect on hydrophobic character of individual amino acids.; Chapter IV attempts to discover conformational similarities between different known sequences of tnaC. In addition we are interested in how or if tryptophan binds to this leader region in the tryptophanase operon.; Chapter V describes a proposed mechanism for the degradation of tryptophan into indole and ammonium pyruvate by tryptophan-indole lyase.; Chapter VI finalizes this dissertation with some conclusions.