Comparison of the intrinsic kinase activity and substrate specificity of c-Abl and Bcr-Abl

We studied the intrinsic tyrosine kinase activity and substrate specificity of c-Abl and Bcr-Abl protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) using the peptide substrates discovered from a synthetic combinatorial peptide library. Our data indicate that the phosphorylation of these peptides by Bcr-Abl was consistently stronger than that by c-Abl. Bcr-Abl also showed substrate preference towards those peptides with one or more positive charges.