Synthetic catalysts incorporating molecular recognition domains can reliably mimic naturally-occurring enzymes to direct a chemical reaction to a particular instance of a functional group facilitating site-selective modifications. We propose a solution to the problem of site-selective chemistry incorporating a DNA aptamer recognition domain: DNA-conjugated small molecule catalysts (DCats), prepared by tethering a small molecule catalyst to a specific DNA aptamer. Here, we present a successful implementation of a model system. We designed several DNA-imidazole conjugate able to increase the rate of target ester hydrolysis to be equivalent with up to 100 times more untethered imidazole while ignoring other esters. Notably, the kinetic behavior of the DCats closely follows the Michael-Menten model for bioenzymes exhibiting substrate saturation and turnover, which implies that our system mimics natural enzymes’ ability to perform site-selective chemistry.

DNA conjugated catalyst for targeted ester hydrolysis exhibits enzymatic kinetics

256th National Meeting (2018)

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