ABSTRACT
Adenosine diphosphate ribosylation (ADP-ribosylation) is a crucial post-translational modification involved in important regulatory mechanisms of numerous cellular pathways including histone maintenance and DNA damage repair. To study this modification, well-defined ADP-ribosylated peptides, proteins, and close analogues thereof have been invaluable tools. Recently, proteomics studies have revealed histidine residues to be ADP-ribosylated. We describe here the synthesis of a complete set of triazole-isosteres of ADP-ribosylated histidine to serve as probes for ADP-ribosylating biomachinery. By exploiting Cu(I)- and Ru(II)-catalyzed click chemistry between a propargylglycine building block and an α- or ß-configured azidoribose, we have successfully assembled the α- and ß-configured 1,4- and 1,5-triazoles, mimicking N(τ)- and N(π)-ADP-ribosylated histidine, respectively. The ribosylated building blocks could be incorporated into a peptide sequence using standard solid-phase peptide synthesis and transformed on resin into the ADP-ribosylated fragments to provide a total of four ADP-ribosyl triazole conjugates, which were evaluated for their chemical and enzymatic stability. The 1,5-triazole analogues mimicking the N(π)-substituted histidines proved susceptible to base-induced epimerization and the ADP-ribosyl α-1,5-triazole linkage could be cleaved by the (ADP-ribosyl)hydrolase ARH3.