Peptides are important in countless areas of biomedical research.
A major use is their ability to serve as antigens for the generation of antibodies. Many peptides occur in nature only in minute quantities. Much time-consuming effort in isolating sufficient quantities of peptides for research can be eliminated by using modern peptide synthesizers which can produce gram quantities of peptides in a day or two. The MRC protein laboratory is capable of synthesizing and purifying peptides of up to 60 amino acids in length. Peptides containing modified amino acids can also be generated upon special request.