In biology, protein-ligand binding is a highly regulated process which employs various mechanisms such as allosteric regulation and posttranslational modification. These directed ligand-binding events in turn provide essential means to regulate protein functions. In contrast, most synthetic receptors lack such effective regulatory tools to control their guest binding, in part because of the relatively simple structures of many artificial receptors, which often contain only a single binding cavity. Recently, we synthesized a new family of synthetic receptors, termed metal-organic supercontainers (MOSCs), from the assembly of divalent metal ions, sulfonylcalixarene-based container precursors, and carboxylate linkers. As a result of the incorporation of multiple container precursors within a single host, the MOSCs possess increased structural complexity and feature both internal and external cavities. This readily affords isolated remote binding domains suitable for recognizing multiple guests, thus allowing the molecular recognition to be regulated via a biomimetic allosteric mechanism. In this presentation, we demonstrate how the above design principles have led to ‘smart’ synthetic hosts capable of not only regulating their guest binding, but also modulating a range of chemical transformations through a small-molecule effector.

Regulating molecular recognition in synthetic supercontainers

249th National Meeting (2015)

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