No abstract

The hexamer and octamer of trans-2-aminocyclobutane carboxylic acid were prepared and their conformational preferences studied experimentally and using molecular modeling. All observations suggest a marked preference for the folding of these oligomers into a well-defined 12-helical conformation, in both solution and the solid state.

Phosphine-free palladium-catalyzed Mizoroki-Heck reaction was performed using ball-milling in polyethylene glycol under mild conditions. Good to excellent yields of coupling products were obtained. This activation technique also allowed the concomitant formation of round shaped Pd-PEG nanoparticles that were characterized by TEM analysis.

A new route to diverse 2-substituted-3-methoxycarbonyl pyrroles has been developed. Diverse SES protected alpha-methylene beta-aminoesters were obtained by a 3-component aza-Baylis-Hillman reaction. Diversity arose from the aryl aldehydes which can be used in this reaction. N-Alkylation with allyl bromide under mild conditions provided the corresponding dienes. These substituted dienes were cyclized by ring closing metathesis at room temperature or under microwave-activation with Grubbs-type II catalyst to yield SES-protected pyrroline intermediates. The final pyrroles were obtained by base-promoted dehydrodesulfinylation/aromatization. The scope of each of these reactions was explored.

This work describes the use of conformer-selective laser spectroscopy following supersonic expansion to probe the local folding proclivities of four-membered ring cyclic β-amino acid building blocks. Emphasis is placed on stereochemical effects as well as on the structural changes induced by the replacement of a carbon atom of the cycle by a nitrogen atom. The amide A IR spectra are obtained and interpreted with the help of quantum chemistry structure calculations. Results provide evidence that the building block with a trans-substituted cyclobutane ring has a predilection to form strong C8 hydrogen bonds. Nitrogen-atom substitution in the ring induces the formation of the hydrazino turn, with a related but distinct hydrogen-bonding network: the structure is best viewed as a bifurcated C8/C5 bond with the N heteroatom lone electron pair playing a significant acceptor role, which supports recent observations on the hydrazino turn structure in solution. Surprisingly, this study shows that the cis-substituted cyclobutane ring derivative also gives rise predominantly to a C8 hydrogen bond, although weaker than in the two former cases, a feature that is not often encountered for this building block.

Cyclic homologated amino acids are important building blocks for the construction of helical foldamers. N-aminoazetidine-2-carboxylic acid (AAzC), an aza analogue of trans-2-aminocyclobutanecarboxylic acid (tACBC), displays a strong hydrazino turn conformational feature, which is proposed to act as an 8-helix primer. tACBC oligomers bearing a single N-terminal AAzC residue were studied to evaluate the ability of AAzC to induce and support an 8-helix along the oligopeptide length. While tACBC homooligomers assume a dominant 12-helix conformation, the aza-primed oligomers preferentially adopt a stabilized 8-helix conformation for an oligomer length up to 6 residues. The (formal) single-atom exchange at the N terminus of a tACBC oligomer thus contributes to the sustainability of the 8-helix, which resists the switch to a 12-helix. This effect illustrates atomic-level programmable design for fine tuning of peptide foldamer architectures.

group will be studied before presenting polymer-supported SES groups. SES−Cl in Synthesis Synthesis of Sulfonyl ChlorideThe free-radical addition 1 (Scheme 2) of sodium bisulfite on the double bond of vinyltrimethylsilane 1 catalyzed by tert-butyl perbenzoate provided the sulfonate salt 2 which is currently commercially available. This compound was directly transformed into sulfonyl chloride 3 (SES-Cl) by the action of phosphorus pentachloride, 1 thionyl chloride, 6 or sulfuryl chloride. 7 SES-Cl is a distillable liquid (bp ) 60°C/0.1 mmHg) which can be stored at room temperature. Protection of AminesThe formation of sulfonamide 4 is usually carried out at low temperatures by reaction of the amine with an excess of SES-Cl 3 in the presence of triethylamine (eq 2, Table 1). In the case of aromatic or heterocyclic amines, sodium hydride is instead used as a base.The simple and general synthesis of N-SES amino acids 25,26 should be noted: it starts from the corresponding salt using a temporary trimethylsilane protection on the carboxylic acid function, followed by reaction with SES-Cl (Scheme 3).

The stereochemistry of hydrazides makes them especially interesting as building blocks for molecular design. An exhaustive conformational analysis of three model hydrazides was conducted in a conformer-selective approach by using a combination of high-level quantum chemistry calculations and vibrational spectroscopy in the gas phase and in solution. The NH stretch frequency was found to be highly sensitive to hyperconjugation, thus making it an efficient probe of the conformation of the neighboring nitrogen atom. This property greatly assisted the identification of the isomers observed experimentally in the conformer pool. A rationalization of the hydrazide conformational landscape is proposed, therefore paving the way for a better characterization of secondary structures in larger systems.