Conformational properties of the residues connected by ester and methylated amide bonds: theoretical and solid state conformational studies

Peptides produced by bacteria and fungi often contain an ester bond in the main chain. Some of them have both an ester and methylated amide bond at the same residue. A broad spectrum of biological activities makes these depsipeptides potential drug precursors. To investigate the conformational properties of such modified residues, a systematic theoretical analysis was performed on N-acetyl-L-alanine N′-methylamide (Ac-Ala-NHMe) and the analogues with the ester bond on the C-terminus (Ac-Ala-OMe), N-terminus (Ac-[psi](COO)-Ala-NHMe) as well as the analogues methylated on the N-terminus (Ac-(Me)Ala-OMe) and C-terminus (Ac-[psi](COO)-Ala-NMe2). The ϕ, ψ potential energy surfaces and the confor…