Self-assembly/association interactions involved

While much of the emphasis on inter- and intramolecular interactions, secondary bonding, and forces associated with association and dissociation involve attractive forces, we are finding that phobic effects are also important and for some systems are actually the major factors. Briefly, this can be described by the sayings the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or given the choice between bad and worse, bad wins out. Formation of many self-assemblies is due in large measure to such phobic factors. 

Ion bridging is a specific type of Coulombic interaction involving the simultaneous binding of polyvalent cations (e.g., Ca, Fe, Cu ) to two different anionic functional groups on biopolymer molecules. This type of ionic interaction is commonly involved in associative self-assembly of biopolymers. As a consequence it is also an important contributory factor in the flocculation (via bridging or depletion) of colloidal particles or emulsion droplets in aqueous media containing adsorbed or non-adsorbed biopolymers (Dickinson and McClements, 1995). 

Several laboratories have described systems by which synthetic linear peptide chains self-assemble into desirable secondary and tertiary structures. One self-assembly approach has been the creation of a peptide-amphiphile, whereby a peptide head group has the propensity to form a distinct structural element, while a lipophilic tail serves to align the peptide strands and induce secondary and tertiary structure formation, as well as providing a hydrophobic surface for self-association and/or interaction with other surfaces. The preparation of a dialkyl ester tail first involves the acid-catalyzed condensation of H-Glu-OH with the appropriate fatty acid alcohol to form the dialkyl ester of H-Glu-OH a typical example is shown in Scheme 7. The assembly of peptide-amphiphiles with mono- and dialkyl ester tails is shown in Scheme 8. A series of studies have demonstrated that triple-helical and a-helical protein-like molecular architecture is stabilized in the peptide-amphiphile 44,63-65 ... 

All cellular life today incorporates two processes we will refer to as self-assembly and directed assembly (Fig. 1). The latter involves the formation of covalent bonds by energy-dependent synthetic reactions and requires that a coded sequence in one type of polymer in some way direct the sequence of monomer addition in a second polymeric species. On the other hand, spontaneous self-assembly occurs when certain compounds associate through noncovalent hydrogen bonds, electrostatic forces, and nonpolar interactions that stabilize orderly arrangements of small and large molecules. Three well-known examples include the self-assembly of water molecules into ice, DNA... 

The term synthon is more familiar to organic chemists and describes fragments from which varions molecnles can be bnilt by synthetic procedures. Sometimes the term was also used to describe structural units within supermolecules which can be formed and/or assembled by known or conceivable synthetic operations involving intermolecular interactions To avoid confusion, the term tecton was introduced to describe the molecular units of supramolecular structures assembled through noncovalent forces. Thus, the tecton has been defined as any molecule whose interactions are dominated by particular associative forces that induce self-assembly of an organized network Here, we will use the term synthon for... 

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