Dr. Schepartz and her coworkers began their first foray into the synthesis of miniature proteins in order to 
address the specific challenge of identifying the functional role of protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions in cells.
As colleague Doug Daniels explains, “Miniature proteins are proteins of minimal length, typically 20-50 amino acids that possess stable folded structures and are significantly more affordable to synthesize chemically than their natural counterparts.”
In addition, they recognize their protein and nucleic acid targets with high specificity. The applications of mini proteins exploit their ability to mimic the structure of larger proteins. This will ultimately enable researchers to study how particular proteins contribute to disease pathways.
The strategy employed in the design of mini proteins was pioneered by the Schepartz lab and is known as protein grafting (Figure 1).