Creating nanocavities of tunable sizes: Hollow helices

Authors

Bing Gong, State University of New York at BuffaloFollow
Huaqiang Zeng, State University of New York at Buffalo
Jin Zhu, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Lihua Yuan, State University of New York at Buffalo
Yaohua Han, State University of New York at Buffalo
Shizhi Cheng, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences
Mako Furukawa, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Ruben D. Parra, De Paul UniversityFollow
Audrey Y. Kovalevsky, State University of New York at Buffalo
Jeffrey L. Mills, State University of New York at Buffalo
Ewa Skrzypczak-Jankun, University of Toledo
Suzana Martinovic, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Richard D. Smith, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Chong Zheng, Northern Illinois University
Thomas Szyperski, State University of New York at Buffalo
Xiao Cheng Zeng, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

9-3-2002

Citation

PNAS, September 3, 2002, vol. 99, no. 18, pp. 11583–11588.

Comments

Copyright 2002. Used by permission.

Abstract

A general strategy for creating nanocavities with tunable sizes based on the folding of unnatural oligomers is presented. The backbones of these oligomers are rigidified by localized, threecenter intramolecular hydrogen bonds, which lead to well-defined hollow helical conformations. Changing the curvature of the oligomer backbone leads to the adjustment of the interior cavity size. Helices with interior cavities of 10 Å to >30 Å across, the largest thus far formed by the folding of unnatural foldamers, are generated. Cavities of these sizes are usually seen at the tertiary and quaternary structural levels of proteins. The ability to tune molecular dimensions without altering the underlying topology is seen in few natural and unnatural foldamer systems.