International Summer School PROGRAM - Laboratoire d'Infochimie ...

What does the recognition of biomolecules and switchable nanoassemblies have
in common? Interacting Molecules!
Prof. Dr. Carsten Schmuck, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Universitätsstrasse 7,
45141 Essen, Germany
The lecture will focus on some recent achievements from our laboratory giving an
overview of the research going on in our group. Our research focuses on the
development, synthesis and evaluation of new supramolecular systems which function
in polar solvents and thus might have prospect for applications. Currently our work
mainly involves ionic interactions as a key non-covalent bond. We have introduced
guanidiniocarbonyl pyrroles as one of the most efficient oxoanion binding motifs known
so far relying on H-bond assisted ion pair formation. The systematic thermodynamic
study of knock-out analogues allows us to learn more about the importance of
individual non-covalent interactions for the overall binding affinity.
With the help of combinatorial approaches, we have used this binding motif to develop
sensors for amino acids or highly efficient stereoselective receptors for oligopeptides.
Currently, we are working on protein surface or DNA recognition. For example,
tetravalent peptide ligands identified from the screening of a combinatorial library were
shown to be highly efficient non-competitive enzyme inhibitors working by binding to
the protein surface thus blocking the access to the active site.
We are also interested in self-assembling zwitterions which form soft materials such as
vesicles, polymers or monolayers in polar solvents and on surfaces. For example, very
recently we developed a supramolecular polymer based on a monomer with two
orthogonal self-complementary binding sites using either metal-ligand or ionic
interactions. In a hierarchical self-assembly process this molecule first forms ion paired
dimers which can be polymerized by the addition of metal ions.