A series of alkene-functional polymers were synthesized by controlled polymerization techniques in order to investigate and compare the efficiency and orthogonality of both photochemically and thermally initiated thiol-ene click coupling reactions. The copolymers were designed to have single or multiple alkene-functional groups along the backbone, and to evaluate the robustness of these procedures, functionalization reactions with a library of mercaptans were studied. In comparing the photoinitiated reaction to its thermal counterpart, the thiol-ene photocoupling was found to proceed with higher efficiency, require shorter reaction times for complete conversion, and displayed a higher tolerance to various backbones and functional groups. To examine the orthogonality of the thiol-ene click reaction, an asymmetric telechelic polymer based on PS was designed with alkene functionality at one end and an azide at the other. The thermally initiated thiol-ene coupling was found to be completely orthogonal with the traditional azide/alkyne click reaction allowing the individual chain ends to be quantitatively functionalized without the need for protection/deprotection strategies. From these studies, the demonstrated efficiency and orthogonality of thiol-ene chemistry shows it to be a practical addition to the family of click reactions that are suitable for polymer functionalization.

The opportunistic human bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa produces membrane vesicles (MVs) in its surrounding environment. Several features of the P. aeruginosa MV production mechanism are still unknown. We previously observed that depletion of Opr86, which has a role in outer membrane protein (OMP) assembly, resulted in hypervesiculation. In this study, we showed that the outer membrane machinery and alginate synthesis regulatory machinery are closely related to MV production in P. aeruginosa. Depletion of Opr86 resulted in increased expression of the periplasmic serine protease MucD, suggesting that the accumulation of misfolded OMPs in the periplasm is related to MV production. Indeed, the mucD mutant showed a mucoid phenotype and the mucD mutation caused increased MV production. Strains with the gene encoding alginate synthetic regulator AlgU, MucA, or MucB deleted also caused altered MV production. Overexpression of either MucD or AlgW serine proteases resulted in decreased MV production, suggesting that proteases localized in the periplasm repress MV production in P. aeruginosa. Deletion of mucD resulted in increased MV proteins, even in strains with mutations in the Pseudomonas quinolone signal (PQS), which serves as a positive regulator of MV production. This study suggests that misfolded OMPs may be important for MV production, in addition to PQS, and that these regulators act in independent pathways.

Novel stereoregular helical poly­(phenylacetylene) derivatives (PPA-Phe and PPA-Phg) with an amide linkage bearing l-phenylalanine and l-phenylglycine ethyl ester pendants were synthesized for use as chiral stationary phases (CSPs) in HPLC. The polymers showed different chiral recognition abilities depending on the coating solvents. Both PPA-Phe and PPA-Phg exhibited higher chiral recognitions when coated with CHCl3 by having preferable conformations. Their chiral recognition abilities depended on their molecular weight and optical rotations which were influenced by the polymerization solvents and monomer concentration. PPA-Phe and PPA-Phg showed rather different chiral recognitions, indicating that the benzyl group of the former and the phenyl group of the latter also play important roles in the chiral recognition. A few racemates were completely separated on PPA-Phe or PPA-Phg with separation factors comparable or higher than those obtained on the popular polysaccharide-based CSPs.