Calculating Resin Functionalization in Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesis Using a Standardized Method based on Fmoc Determination

Solid-phase synthesis is the method of choice for peptide preparation in both research and industrial settings. The whole synthetic process is governed by the initial functionalization of the resin. Although the literature provides several methods to determine such functionalization, the addition of an Fmoc-amino acid and the posterior spectrophotometric measurement of the dibenzofulvene adduct formed after Fmoc removal is the most widely used for this purpose. However, a range of molar extinction coefficient (ε) values and even wavelengths are currently used in the field, with no standardization of the method. Here, we propose a single-point standardization method that involves a standard solution of the corresponding amino acid to be checked that is prepared freshly at the time of the analysis.