Mirror‐image Phage Display: Aiming at the Mirror

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fittest one of all? Peptides are sensitive to proteolytic degradation and may induce immunogenic responses. Mirror-image phage display circumvents these pitfalls of the common phage-display technique. Phage-displayed peptide libraries are screened for peptides that bind to the perfect mirror image of the target molecule, which ultimately yields peptides solely consisting of D-amino acid residues that bind to the original target. Such peptides are anticipated to be less sensitive to degradation than L-peptides and may be less or not at all immunogenic.