Covalent bridges

Covalent bridging of biopolymers is one of the widely occurring prindples in nature for increasing the stability of the tertiary structure, for example the disulfide bridges in keratin and ribonuclease. 

It is well known that native collagen containes tripeptide sequences, which alone are not capable of building up a triple helix (e.g. Gly-Pro-Leu, Gly-Pro-Ser) when they exist as homopolypeptides. The synthesis of threefold covalently bridged peptide chains opens up the possibility of investigating the folding properties of such weak helix formers, because the bridging reduces the entropy loss during triple-helix formation and thereby increases the thermodynamic stability of the tertiary structure. Therefore, we have... 

PTC was coupled with (Pro-Ala-Gly)n, n = 12. The covalently bridged three-chain compound could be separated by gel chromatography from the respective two chains and the single chain in low yield, PTC-[(Pro-Ala-Gly-)12]3 shows a strong fold (Figs. 20,21) in comparison to the dimer or the monomer. 

The completely synthesized and covalently bridged chains where separated from poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) by saponification with triethylamine in methanol. 

Parallel covalently bridged Antiparallel covalently bridged... 

One may conclude that the rate-determining step of the renaturation is at least partly influenced by the cis-trans isomerization of the peptide bond the secondary nitrogen atom of which arises from proline. Otherwise, only the entropy-controlled slow nuclea-tion should be observed kinetically. The covalent bridging through Lys-Lys, therefore, gives rise not only to thermodynamic stabilization of the triple helix but also to kinetic properties which have hitherto been observed in the case of type III procollagen146) and its aminoterminal fragment Col 1-3144). 

The covalent bridging of the three polypeptide chains with the sequence Ala-Gly-Pro has facilitated, as expected, the nucleation step for triple-helix formation. This is also... 

The second mechanism involves the formation of a covalent bridge through which the electron is passed in the electron transfer process. This is known as the inner-sphere mechanism (Fig. 9-5). 

One of the advances in the field of PET is the design of molecular devices, in which D and A pairs are ingeniously linked by covalent bridges (B) to form D-B-A dyads. Electron transfers between D and A across B in a controlled manner may thus display useful functionalities, such as molecular rectifiers [25], switches [26], biosensors [27], photovoltaic cells [28], and nonlinear optical materials [29]. Spacers that have been utilized are versatile, including small molecules, such as cyclohexane [30], adamantane [31], bicyclo[2.2.2]octane [32], steroids [33], and oligomers of... 

The results of ab initio calculations provide evidence that Me2NC(S)-[14+] is stabilized by resonance electron donation from the a-thioamide group (A, Scheme 12) and by covalent bridging of sulfur to the benzylic carbon (B, Scheme 12).96 Direct resonance stabilization of the carbocation will increase the barrier to the nucleophile addition reaction, because of the requirement for the relatively large fractional loss of the stabilizing resonance interaction (A, Scheme 12) at the transition state for nucleophile addition to a-substituted benzyl carbocations.8,13,28 91-93 If the solvent adds exclusively to an open carbocation that is the minor species in a mixture of open and closed ions, then... 

Even if one can create the SCO ligand-field around one end of a covalently-bridged dinuclear complex, the SCO might influence the ligand-field at the other end. There are many inter-dependent effects to bear in mind of a bonding, electronic and structural kind, and attempts to delineate these are given below. Inter-cluster or inter-chain effects will play difficult-to-control roles in crystalline SCO polynuclear materials, and these have already been alluded to for mononuclear complexes. 

The general dinuclear structural motifs are of the weakly linked, 1, or covalently-bridged, 2, types shown in which... 

Dinudear SCO Complexes Containing Covalent Bridges and Displaying Weak Exchange Coupling Types 2-4 and 12... 

The main factor in determining the handedness of the cholesterics induced by bridged 1,1 -binaphtliyls is the helicity (P or M) of the solute, and this observation is the basis of many configurational studies of chiral binaphthyls. All the homochiral (aP)-binaphthyls 15-19 have an M helicity of the core, and all induce, in biphenyl nematics, M cholesterics.65,75 By systematic structural variations of the covalent bridge, it is possible to obtain I J -binaphthalenes with dihedral angles ranging from 60° to 96° (see series 20-24) the handedness of the cholesteric phase always matches the helicity... 

It was straightforward to apply the TRMC technique to study on-chain charge transport to ladder-type poly-phenylene (LPPP) systems because covalent bridging between the phenylene rings planarizes the chain skeleton, eliminates ring torsions, and reduces static disorder. One can conjecture that in these systems intra-chain motion should be mostly limited by static disorder and chain ends. To confirm this... 

---