Canavanine versus arginine: Prospects for cell-penetrating peptides.

Octanol-water partitioning experiments in the presence of carboxylate-, phosphate-, and sulfate-containing anionic lipids revealed that Ac-Cav-NH2 (where Cav refers to δ-oxa-arginine) partitions less into octanol than does Ac-Arg-NH2, suggesting that a cell-penetrating peptide based on canavanine would be relatively ineffective.