The specific hydrogen bonding interactions between nucleobase pairs play a key role in nature for precise biosynthesis and stereospecific molecular assembly.  Inspired by nature, nucleobases have been employed as building blocks in synthetic polymer chemistry. However, to date, there has been very little research into the effect of nucleobase interactions on the resultant copolymer composition using RAFT polymerization methods.  Methacryloyl-type monomers containing adenine and thymine were synthesized in a good yield. RAFT polymerizations using these two monomers were carried out with a good control. In addition, the copolymerization behaviour of the nucleobase functionalized monomers was studied. These results indicate that the presence or absence of hydrogen bonding interactions between two monomers (Figure 1) can be used to access the copolymers with different monomer sequences. Moderate alternating copolymers had a tendency to be formed in chloroform, while in DMF statistical copolymers were formed. Moreover, nucleobase containing polymers were self-assembled in both organic solvents and water, with the effect of solvent and temperature on self-assembly investigated.  

Effect of complementary nucleobase interactions on the copolymer composition of RAFT copolymerization and self-assembly

248th National Meeting (2014)

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