Polypeptides, chiral

Oxazolidine-2,5-diones (276) are the anhydrides of iV-carboxy-a-amino acids. They react with nucleophiles, such as water, alcohols or amines, to give unstable N-carboxy acids, esters or amides which lose carbon dioxide (equation 87). The products (277) are themselves nucleophilic reagents and may react with another molecule of the oxazolidinedione to yield a dipeptide (equation 88). The process may continue, leading to a polypeptide. Chiral oxazolidine-2,5-diones derived from optically active a-amino acids undergo stereospecific polymerization (72C501). 

The polymers described so far have relatively flexible main chains which can result in complex confonnations. In some cases, tliey can double back and cross over tliemselves. There are also investigations on polymers which are constrained to remain in a confonnation corresponding, at least approximately, to a straight line, but which have amphiphilic properties tliat ensure tliat tliis line is parallel to tire water surface. Chiral molecules are one example and many polypeptides fall into tliis class [107]. Another example is cofacial phtlialocyanine polymers (figure C2.4.9). 

Deming T.J., Facile synthesis of block copol3fpeptides of defined architecture. Nature, 390, 386, 1997. Seidel S.W. and Deming T.J., Use of chiral mthenium and iridium amido-sulfonamidate complexes for controlled, enantioselective polypeptide synthesis. Macromolecules, 36, 969, 2003. 

A less obvious explanation is that the observed residual structure is not due to attractive interactions, but rather to repulsive ones. The steric repulsion between atoms forced to partially overlap is a dominant, if not the dominant, force in all of chemistry. These highly local interactions are known to be important in polymer conformations (Flory, 1969 Ramachandran and Sasisekharan, 1968). For homopolymers or simple alternating polymers, they can often be safely neglected by assuming they confer no net directionality to the chain. Polypeptide chains, however, are chiral and support specific sequences of 20 differently shaped... 

Soltes, L., Sebille, B. (1997). Reversible binding interactions between the tryptophan enantiomers and albumins of different animal species as determined by novel high performance liquid chromatographic methods an attempt to localize the d- and L-tryptophan binding sites on the human serum albumin polypeptide chain by using protein fragments. Chirality 9, 373-379. 

Helical complexes, chirality in, 26 803-804 Helical polypeptide, 24 58 Helical ribbon impeller, 16 690, 691 Helicobacter pylori, 15 303 antibiotic resistant, 3 36 Helio-photocatalysis, 19 78, 95 Heliotridine, 2 80... 

Photochemically Triggered Induced Circular Dichroism in Liposomes When an optically inactive chromophore is subject to the effect of optically active environment, optical activity may be induced at the absorption wavelength of the optically inactive chromophore. This phenomenon of induced circular dichroism(ICD) is often observed in polypeptides bearing various achiral chromophores on the side chain( ). The strong chiral environment caused by the peptide helix structure is responsible for this. Distance from, and orientation to, the chiral field decide the degree of ICD appearing on the achiral chromophore. 

Provided that an optically active molecular aggregate is photochemically perturbed to change the state of molecular alignment, the effect of a chiral environment on an achiral chromophore incorporated in the molecular aggregate will be also altered. It has been known that polypeptides bearing photochromic side groups change their optically active properties as a result of photochromic reaction(10-12). This phenomenon is likely to be related to non-linear photoresponsiveness. 

Although not directly within the scope of these alkaloid-catalyzed reactions, it is worthy of note that an Italian group has apparently increased the enantiomeric yields in the epoxidation reactions of chalcones by using chiral polypeptides (84). 

This same picture unfolds when we examine the use of chiral amines in base-catalyzed reactions. Although in several individual cases (91,92) such as epox-idations (84), one Michael reaction (36), and an intramolecular aldol reaction (93), amino acids (11) or polypeptides (84) are better catalysts than quinine, the range of usefulness of quinine appears to warrant the term miracle catalyst. ... 

The continuous availability of trillions of independent microreactors greatly multiplied the initial mixture of extraterrestrial organics and hydrothermal vent-produced chemicals into a rich variety of adsorbed and transformed materials, including lipids, amphiphiles, chiral metal complexes, amino add polymers, and nudeo-tide bases. Production and chiral amplification of polypeptides and other polymeric molecules would be induced by exposure of absorbed amino adds and organics to dehydration/rehydration cydes promoted by heat-flows beneath a sea-level hydro-thermal field or by sporadic subaerial exposure of near-shore vents and surfaces. In this environment the e.e. of chiral amino adds could have provided the ligands required for any metal centers capable of catalyzing enantiomeric dominance. The auto-amplification of a small e.e. of i-amino adds, whether extraterrestrially delivered or fluctuationally induced, thus becomes conceptually reasonable. 

Noncovalent interactions play a key role in biodisciplines. A celebrated example is the secondary structure of proteins. The 20 natural amino acids are each characterized by different structures with more or less acidic or basic, hydrophilic or hydrophobic functionalities and thus capable of different intermolecular interactions. Due to the formation of hydrogen bonds between nearby C=0 and N-H groups, protein polypeptide backbones can be twisted into a-helixes, even in the gas phase in the absence of any solvent." A protein function is determined more directly by its three-dimensional structure and dynamics than by its sequence of amino acids. Three-dimensional structures are strongly influenced by weak non-covalent interactions between side functionalities, but the central importance of these weak interactions is by no means limited to structural effects. Life relies on biological specificity, which arises from the fact that individual biomolecules communicate through non-covalent interactions." " Molecular and chiral recognition rely on... 

The relevance of such a diastereomer discrimination to the transport of chiral molecules, such as pharmaceuticals or biochemicals, through hydrophobic barriers, such as cell membranes, is obvious. Furthermore, since poly(DL-lysine) followed the same general pattern of behavior displayed by the other three samples, the observed surface-pressure changes probably were not due to helicalization of the polypeptide. Whereas poly(L-lysine) and poly(D-lysine) form helices with opposite screw sense, the random copolymer poly(DL-lysine) is to a large extent prevented from forming helices. 

Vancomycin was the first macrocyclic antibiotic evaluated as selector for the synthesis of HPLC chiral stationary phases (CSPs) [7], along with rifamycin B (among ansamycins) and thiostrepton (among polypeptides). 

Kamande, M. W., Zhu, X., Kapnissi-Christodoulou, C., and Warner, 1. M. (2004). Chiral separations using a polypeptide and polymeric dipeptide surfactant polyelectrolyte multilayer coating in open-tubular capillary electrochromatography. Anal. Chem. 76, 6681—6692. 

Fischer polypeptide synthesis org chem A synthesis of peptides in which a-amino acids or those peptides with a free amino group react with acid halides of a-haloacids, followed by amination with ammonia. fish-ar pal-e pep,tTd. sin tha sas ) Fischer projection orgchem) A method for representing the spatial arrangement of groups around chiral carbon atoms the four bonds to the chiral carbon are represented by a cross, with the assumption that the horizontal bonds project toward the viewer and the vertical bonds away from the viewer fish-ar pra.jek-shon) Fischer s salt See cobalt potassium nitrite. fish-3rz solt)... 

Many other biological structures exhibit LC behavior. For instance, the concentrated protein solution that is extruded by a spider to generate silk is actually an LC phase. The precise ordering of molecules in silk is critical to its renowned strength. DNA and many polypeptides can also form LC phases. Since biological mesogens are usually chiral, chirality often plays a role in these phases. 

The stereochemistry of step polymerization is considered now. Bond formation during step polymerization almost never results in the formation of a stereocenter. For example, neither the ester nor the amide groups in polyesters and polyamides, respectively, possess stereocenters. Stereoregular polymers are possible when there is a chiral stereocenter in the monomer(s) [Oishi and Kawakami, 2000 Orgueira and Varela, 2001 Vanhaecht et al., 2001], An example would be the polymerization of (R) or (S)-H2NCHRCOOH. Naturally occurring polypeptides are stereoregular polymers formed from optically active a-amino acids. 

The first successful synthesis of a biologically active cyclic peptide, gramicidin S, was accomplished by Schwyzer and Sieber[6,7l via the 4-nitrophenyl ester. The fact that -protected peptide esters can be deprotected to give the peptide active ester salts has made this approach popular not only in the synthesis of sequential polypeptides but also of cyclic peptides. Among the various active esters examined for this purpose, the pentafluorophenyl esters have emerged as the most reactive ones, although a high risk of epimerization is encountered when C-terminal chiral amino acids are involved. 

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