The specific recognition of protein surface elements is a fundamental challenge in the life sciences. New developments in this field will form the basis of advanced therapeutic approaches and lead to applications such as sensors, affinity tags, immobilization techniques, and protein-based materials. Synthetic supramolecular molecules and materials are creating new opportunities for protein recognition that are orthogonal to classical small molecule and protein-based approaches. As outlined here, their unique molecular features enable the recognition of amino acids, peptides, and even whole protein surfaces, which can be applied to the modulation and assembly of proteins. We believe that structural insights into these processes are of great value for the further development of this field and have therefore focused this Perspective on contributions that provide such structural data.
Interest in bay‐substituted perylene‐3,4:9,10‐tetracarboxylic diimides (PDIs) for solution‐based applications is growing due to their improved solubility and altered optical and electronic properties compared to unsubstituted PDIs. Synthetic routes to 1,12‐bay‐substituted PDIs have been very demanding due to issues with steric hindrance and poor regioselectivity. Here we report a simple one‐step regioselective and high yielding synthesis of a 1,12‐dihydroxylated PDI derivative that can subsequently be alkylated in a straightforward fashion to produce nonplanar 1,12‐dialkoxy PDIs. These PDIs show a large Stokes shift, which is specifically useful for bioimaging applications. A particular cationic PDI gemini‐type surfactant has been developed that forms nonfluorescent self‐assembled particles in water (“off state”), which exerts a high fluorescence upon incorporation into lipophilic bilayers (“on state”). Therefore, this probe is appealing as a highly sensitive fluorescent labelling marker with a low background signal for imaging artificial and cellular membranes.
The cellular uptake of self‐assembled biological and synthetic matter results from their multicomponent properties. However, the interplay of the building block composition of self‐assembled materials and uptake mechanisms urgently requires addressing. It is shown here that supramolecular polymers that self‐assemble in aqueous media, are a modular and controllable platform to modulate cellular delivery by the introduction of small ligands or cationic moieties, with concomitantly different cellular uptake kinetics and valence dependence. A library of supramolecular copolymers revealed stringent mutually exclusive uptake behavior in which either of the uptake pathways dominated, with sharp compositional transition. Supramolecular biomaterial engineering thus provides for adaptive platforms with great potential for efficient tuning of multivalent and multicomponent systems interfacing with biological matter.
Exenatide was the first marketed GLP-1 receptor agonist for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Modification to the chemical structure or the formulation has the potential to increase the stability of exenatide. We introduced human complex-type sialyloligosaccharide to exenatide at the native Asn28 position. The synthesis was achieved using both solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) and Omniligase-1-mediated chemoenzymatic ligation. The results demonstrate that glycosylation increases the proteolytic stability of exenatide while retaining its full biological activity.
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