ABSTRACT
Recognition of anionic species plays a fundamental role in many essential chemical, biological, and environmental processes. Numerous monographs and review papers on molecular recognition of anions by synthetic receptors reflect the continuing and growing interest in this area of supramolecular chemistry. However, despite the enormous progress made over the last 20 years in the design of these molecules, the design of receptors for chiral anions is much less developed. Chiral recognition is one of the most subtle types of selectivity, and it requires very precise spatial organization of the receptor framework. At the same time, this phenomenon commonly occurs in many processes present in nature, often being their fundamental step. For these reasons, research directed toward understanding the chiral anion recognition phenomenon may lead to the identification of structural patterns that enable increasingly efficient receptor design. In this review, we present the recent progress made in the area of synthetic receptors for biologically relevant chiral carboxylates.
ABSTRACT
We investigated the influence of various factors (including solvent mixtures) on chiral recognition of chiral carboxylates, using the titration method under 1H NMR control. We found that strong binding carboxylates (geometrical matching) is not enough for the satisfactory differentiation of enantiomers. Moreover, solvent mixture studies indicate a significant influence of environment on the formation of diastereomeric complexes and variations among them. Our findings offer insights into the complementarity of chiral recognition processes.
ABSTRACT
An understanding of host-guest noncovalent interactions lies at the very heart of supramolecular chemistry. Often a minute change to the structure of a host molecule's binding site can have a dramatic impact on a prospective host-guest binding event, changing the relative selectivity for potential guest molecules. With the overall goal of aiding the rational design of selective and effective receptors for anions, we have studied the influence of small perturbations in binding site geometry for a series of five closely related 20-membered macrocyclic tetra-amide receptors, constructed from two building blocks from a pool of azulene-5,7-bisamide, azulene-1,3-bisamide, and dipicolinic bisamide units. The solid-state structures revealed that the conformational preferences of the free receptors are driven by the inherent preferences of the building blocks, yet in some cases the macrocyclic topology is able to over-ride these to promote pre-organized conformations favorable for anion binding. The solid-state structures of the chloride complexes of these receptors revealed that although all the receptors can adapt to binding to the challenging small Cl- guest with all the NH groups, only receptors containing azulene-5,7-bisamide units form short and linear, and therefore strong, hydrogen-bonding interactions. These conclusions are further supported by studies in solution. Although all the receptors showed high affinities toward a series of anions (H2 PO4- , PhCO2- , Cl- , and Br- ), even in a highly competitive polar medium (DMSO/25 % MeOH), only receptors containing azulene-5,7-bisamide units exhibited non-inherent selectivity for Cl- over PhCO2- , breaking the Hofmeister trend of selectivity. The data presented herein highlight the privileged properties of the azulene-5,7-bisamide building block for binding to chloride anions and provide guidelines for the construction of selective and efficient anion receptors with prospective practical applications.
ABSTRACT
Two urea-based receptors containing a glucosamine derivative were synthesized and investigated in terms of their ability to recognize chiral and achiral anions. Both receptors demonstrated a high affinity toward carboxylates in very competitive DMSO/water mixtures. The chiral recognition properties of these compounds were studied using structurally differentiated guests derived from mandelic acid and α-amino acids. We found that receptor 1 exhibits significantly higher enantioselectivities than compound 2 for all anions investigated, with a KS/KR ratio of up to 2. This low enantiodiscrimination in the case of receptor 2 is attributed to a lack of interactions between its sugar moieties and the side chain of chiral anions, due to their inadequate spatial arrangement.
