At present, supramolecular transformations are mainly realized as structural alterations, where connectivity patterns and/or spatial arrangements within a single self-assembly are toggled between two states by changing molecular binding properties through either light, chemical or redox input. Only recently, the Stang group1 and our team2 have been able to additionally manage compositional changes in supramolecular transformations. In detail, both groups have mimicked an intricate biological process, called gene shuffling,3 by setting up spontaneous and catalytic supramolecule-to-supramolecule transformations where two distinct self-assemblies fused into a new assembly via shuffling of their components, requiring to fully reorder both compositional and constitutional connectivities. The present paper will report about further fascinating developments in this direction, i.e. multiple cascading supramolecular fusions A  ?AB  ?ABC , their thermodynamics and kinetics. It is argued that the emerging principles from the present studies will become valuable for the design of adaptive materials operating on the principle of supramolecular fusion.References:(1) Zheng, Y.-R.; Zhao, Z.; Wang, M.; Ghosh, K.; Pollock, J. B.; Cook, T. R.; Stang, P. J. A facile approach toward multicomponent supramolecular structures: selective self-assembly via charge separation. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 132,  16873�16882 (2010).(2) Saha, M. L.; Pramanik, S.; Schmittel, M. Spontaneous and catalytic fusion of supramolecules. Chem. Commun. 48,  9459�9461 (2012).(3) Pasek, S.; Risler, J.-L.; Br�zellec, P. Gene fusion/?ssion is a major contributor to evolution of multi-domain bacterial proteins. Bioinformatics 22,  1418�1423 (2006).

From self-sorting to multiple supramolecular fusions

248th National Meeting (2014)

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