Designing supramolecular assemblies containing nucleic acids and synthetic molecules is attractive for achieving well-defined nanomaterials for sensing, delivery, and imaging.[1] Besides, nucleic acids such as DNA are chiral templates that can direct a helical supramolecular organization of molecular guests, such as organic dyes, which could be exploited for chiroptical sensing and chiral switches.[2,3]<br/>In this communication, we report our recent progress on the utilization of nucleotides or DNA templates for directing the supramolecular assembly of achiral π-conjugated molecules, which are attractive in view of their water solubility and optical properties. We use chiroptical spectroscopy to assess the self-assembly between the template and the molecular guests, and the induced chiroptical signals reveal unexpected template length- and sequence-dependent chiral assembly processes.[4-6] By comparing our results with molecular modelling simulations, we bring fundamental insights on the structures, the interactions at play, and the cooperativity effects within these supramolecular DNA assemblies. We show that chiral organization of the guests is modulated through different levels of interactions with the template, which is interesting to probe the enzymatic activity towards nucleotides or nucleic acids substrates.

Exploiting induced chirality in supramolecular DNA assemblies

255th National Meeting (2018)

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