Themed collection Foldamers

A brief description of current models of aromatic interactions as well as a survey of aromatic foldamers in aqueous environments.

A perspective on the design and elaboration of β-peptide bundles, non-natural assemblies that exhibit many protein-like properties.

Integrating photoswitchable unit into helical macromolecules allows their conformations to be externally controlled by light and therefore provides a versatile strategy to design photoresponsive materials.

Protein ligands with high affinity and selectivity can be mined from large libraries of conformationally constrained oligomers.

Review of recent advances in the design of topologically folded (topofold) biomolecular nano-structures and their folding pathways.

Molecular switching involving metastable states by chiral helicene oligomeric foldamers exhibits notable non-equilibrium thermodynamic properties, which can be used for sensing environmental changes.

Dynamic foldamers translate chemical signals into conformational changes, and hence into chemical outputs such as control of reactivity and selectivity.

Helical peptoids bearing 2,2′-bipyridine form ruthenium complexes via intermolecular binding to linear peptoid strands or intramolecular binding to a cyclic scaffold.

Adjacent thioamides can have electronic interactions that alter spectral properties and fluorescence quenching.

A bottom-up design rationale was used to select an alternating β/γ-peptide motif which folds into a well-defined 13-helix in solution.

An oligoquinoline foldamer library was synthesized and screened for agonism of lipid bilayer catalysed assembly of islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP).

A new cis-ACHC analogue, cis-2-amino-cis-4-methylcyclohexanecarboxylic acid, significantly stabilizes the 11/9-helix propensity in protic solvents.

We describe a new class of hydrogelator based on helical β³-peptide foldamers carrying a bioactive payload. The β³-peptides self-assemble to form a nanofibrous mesh resulting in a stable hydrogel. Co-incubation with different β³-peptide monomers allowed tuning of cell adherence.

The manuscript describes the impact of alkene-derived hydrogen bond isosteres on the stability of constrained helices.

An extended sequence of α-amino acids in HIF-1α is replaced with a non-natural topographical mimic of an α-helix comprised from an aromatic oligoamide to reproduce its p300 recognition properties.

A small molecule promotes duplex formation by nucleic acids with natural and non-natural backbones that otherwise do not form duplexes.

We report the first complete characterization of the directional molecular packing patterns of individual foldamers within a new foldecture with a well defined hexagonal plate shape.

The self-assembly of 5-fluorouracil dilysine conjugates into self-supporting hydrogels, comprised of entangled nanofibers or rigid nanotubes with diameters of 10 and 16 nm, respectively, is reported.

We report the crystal structure of a novel 60-subunit dodecahedral cage that results from self-assembly of a re-engineered version of a natural protein (PduA) from the Pdu microcompartment shell.

Design, synthesis, single-crystal conformations and molecular aggregations of hybrid triple-stranded β-sheets, and their structural analogy with protein structures are reported.

The antiparallel arrangement of two strands of the non-classical β-structure, formed exclusively via cis-4S-(OH) prolyl polypeptide as established by FRET, propagates into self-assembled nanofibers upon conjugation with C12/C14/C16 hydrocarbon chains.

X-Ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy were used to investigate the effect of primary structure on both secondary structure and enantioselectivity in peptide-based catalysts for an atroposelective bromination reaction.

DNA duplexes containing unnatural base-pair surrogates are attractive biomolecular nanomaterials with potentially beneficial photophysical or electronic properties.

Photo-crosslinking produced more robust nanosheets that can survive sonication, lyophilization, and other biochemical manipulations.

β-Peptide foldamers were functionalised with the cell recognition motifs RGD or IKVAV, self-assembled into fibres, and co-assembled with non-functionalised β-peptides to yield tunable bioscaffolds with cell adhering properties.

The synthesis and helix folding propensity of achiral all-cis amide (NtBu)-glycine oligomers is reported.

Aryl-triazole foldamers incorporating a pyridinium motif are shown to be strongly halide anion binding in aqueous solvent mixtures.

An engineered hairpin ribozyme supports the recombination of two non-functional substrates into a functional hammerhead ribozyme.

Hydrogen-bonding to carbonyl of nitrogen-pyramidalized bicyclic β-proline amides can switch the preferred nitrogen-pyramidalization direction, as detected by VCD spectroscopy.

Self-assembly combined with folding generate cavities for large polar guests.

Structural and thermodynamic analysis of a family of synthetic proteins with heterogeneous backbones yields new insights into the ability of unnatural amino acids to be accommodated into α-helices.

Folding of a bis(merocyanine) dye with two different chromophores leads to a model system to elucidate electronic interactions in heteroaggregates.

The remote end groups of aromatic foldamers are found to profoundly impact the assembling propensity of these molecules.

The kinetic stabilities of the helical conformations of indolocarbazole–pyridine hybrid foldamers were modulated through single site modification.

The adjustment of β-sheet content by β-amino acid substitutions revealed β-sheet folding-dependent biological activity.

We describe herein the design, synthesis and conformational investigation of Pro-Amb (proline-3-amino-2-methoxybenzoic acid) incorporated Angiotensin II and its truncated analogues.

We report here the efficient in situ iodination of tyrosine-type side-chains located within a foldamer helix bundle, permitting structure determination using single-wavelength anomalous diffraction (SAD) methods.

The free energy landscape and conformations of minima and intermediates along the stepwise handedness inversion pathway, proceeding through the simultaneous unfolding/folding of adjacent monomer–monomer linkages, for a helical arylamide foldamer.

Three differently bay-substituted perylene bisimides together with the conventional unsubstituted chromophore were synthetically incorporated as homodimers in DNA double strands and undergo spontaneous strand exchange if mixed together.

The design of a β/γ-peptide reveals an unprecedented 9/8-ribbon whose curvature depends on the β-residue configuration and the γ-residue conformation.