Biological templates

The stereocontroUed syntheses of steroid side chains for ecdysone, cmstecdysone, brassinoHde, withanoHde, and vitamin D have been reviewed (185). Also, other manuscripts, including reviews on the partial synthesis of steroids (186), steroid dmgs (187—189), biologically active steroids (190), heterocychc steroids (191), vitamin D (192), novel oxidations of steroids (193), and template-directed functionali2ation of steroids (194), have been pubhshed. 

Addadi and Weiner (1999) have concisely and critically reviewed these various strategies and have added their own variant - the use of biological templates, for instance bacterium surfaces to assist self-assembly. Here, self-assembly and biomimetics join forces productively. 

Finally, many biological polymerizations most probably involve templates. These array the monomeric units and the order obtained is reflected in the polymer produced. 

If we consider natural synthetic processes, enzymes are seen to exert complete control over the enantiomeric purity of biomolecules (see Figure 8.2). They are able to achieve this because they are made of single enantiomers of amino adds. The resulting enantiomer of the enzymes functions as a template for the synthesis of only one enantiomer of the product Moreover, the interaction of an enzyme with the two enantiomers of a given substrate molecule will be different. Biologically important molecules often show effective activity as one enantiomer, the other is at best ineffective or at worst detrimental. 

Abstract The dirhodium(II) core is a template onto which both achiral and chiral ligands are placed so that four exist in a paddle wheel fashion around the core. The resulting structures are effective electrophilic catalysts for diazo decomposition in reactions that involve metal carbene intermediates. High selectivities are achieved in transformations ranging from addition to insertion and association. The syntheses of natural products and compounds of biological interest have employed these catalysts and methods with increasing frequency. 

A potential major benefit of a cyclohexene-based template was the capacity to mimic more closely the putative transition state sialosyl cation by the placement of a double bond in the correct position. While the ring conformation in Neu5Ac2en 4 is very similar to the sialosyl cation transition state 5, these two stracmres are essentially isomers due to the fact that the double bond is either between the ring oxygen and C-2 in 5 or C-2 and C-3 in 4. The synthesis and biological evaluation of... 

Although biologically active helical y-peptides have not been reported so far, the striking structural similarities (polarity and helicity) between the a-helix of L-a-peptides and the (P)-2.6i4-hehx of y-peptides suggest that the 2.614-helical backbone might prove useful as a template for elaborating functional mimetics of a-helical surfaces and intervening in protein-protein interactions. 

Finally, feasibility studies have clearly demonstrated that S-layer technologies have a great potential for nanopatteming of snrfaces, biological templating, and the formation of arrays of metal clusters, as required in nonlinear optics and molecular electronics. 

The same template as for compound 71 was used by Peukert et al. for a 2D similarity search in the Aventis in-house compound collection [144]. 75 Compounds with a similarity index >0.80 were biologically tested. The moderately active l-carboxy,8-sulfonamido-naphthalene (IC50 = 9.5pM), with insufficient chemical stability, was the starting point for the design of substi-... 

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