ABSTRACT
Investigations into the chemical synthesis of Phosphoserine-containing peptides commenced in the early 1950s, after it had been elucidated some 20 years earlier that the phosphate content of the bovine milk caseins was in the form of O-phosphoserine. The chemical synthesis of Phosphotyrosine-containing peptides is not as well developed in the literature as Phosphoserine-containing peptides; this has been due predominantly to the infrequent observation of such peptides in biochemical systems. Indeed, prior to 1983 there had only been two studies aimed at the synthesis of simple Phosphotyrosine-containing peptides, both of these "global" phosphorylation procedures being tedious and lacking general applicability. The resurgence of interest in the efficient synthesis of Phosphotyrosine-peptides in 1983 was a consequence of the hypothesis that protein tyrosine phosphorylation possibly played important regulatory roles in several cellular processes. The application of the derivatives to solid-phase peptide synthesis methodology indicates that the "synthon incorporation strategy" will be a useful technique for the synthesis of many important Phosphoserine -and Phosphotyrosine-peptides.
