Biomimetic chemistry methodology

In Chap. 6, biological supermolecules are explained and classified by function. Artificial supramolecular systems that mimic biological ones are also described. Biomimetic chemistry, which mimics the essence of a biosystem and then develops an artificial system that is better than the biological one, is widely used in this field. Fimctional developments, such as molecular transport, information transmission and conversion, energy conversion and molecular conversion (enzymatic functionaUty) based on biomimetic chemistry are described. New methodologies such as combinatorial chemistry and in vitro selection mimic evolutionary processes in nature. We leave this topic until the end of the book because we want to show that there is still lots to do in supramolecular chemistry, and that supramolecular chemistry has huge future potential. 

The charge separation processes in photosynthesis involve photoinduced electron transfer from chlorophyll to quinone derivatives. A popular methodology of biomimetic chemistry for biological active sites is assembly of supposedly essential components via covalent linkage. TTius, a variety of covalently linked porphyrin-quinone derivatives such as 1 and 2 below have been prepared and photoinduced electron transfer therein investigated as models of photosynthetic electron transfer [12]. There are two major difficulties in the covalent approach to the preparation of this type of face-to-face porphyrin-quinone derivatives. The first is synthetic problems associated with the preparation of highly substituted quinone precursors and the porphyrin-quinone double coupling reactions. Second, there is little room for the systematic modification of the electtonic/steric structures of quinones. 

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