USE OF NON-CANONICAL AMINO ACIDS AS METABOLIC MARKERS FOR RAPIDLY-DIVIDING CELLS

摘要

The invention provides methods, reagents and systems to preferentially mark fast-proliferating cells/tissues (such as cancer), by incorporating non-natural amino acids into proteins, preferably in vivo, using the endogenous protein synthesis machinery of an organism. The incorporated non-natural amino acids contain reactive groups for further chemical reagents, which may serve as a "handle" to for a number of uses, such as imaging of cancer cells, targeting drugs to preferentially kill cancer cells, and proteomic analysis in the context of large scale or high throughput screening for candidate drug leads that affects the proliferation of a target cell, etc.