ortho-Aminomethylphenylboronic acids are used in receptors for carbohydrates and various other compounds containing vicinal diols. The presence of the o-aminomethyl group enhances the affinity towards diols at neutral pH, and the manner in which this group plays this role has been a topic of debate. Further, the aminomethyl group is believed to be involved in the turn-on of the emission properties of appended fluorophores upon diol binding. In this treatise, a uniform picture emerges for the role of this group: it primarily acts as an electron-withdrawing group that lowers the pK a of the neighbouring boronic acid thereby facilitating diol binding at neutral pH. The amine appears to play no role in the modulation of the fluorescence of appended fluorophores in the protic-solvent-inserted form of the boronic acid/boronate ester. Instead, fluorescence turn-on can be consistently tied to vibrational-coupled excited-state relaxation (a loose-bolt effect). Overall, this Review unifies and discusses the existing data as of 2019 whilst also highlighting why o-aminomethyl groups are so widely used, and the role they play in carbohydrate sensing using phenylboronic acids.Physical organic chemistry is a discipline in which experimental and theoretical approaches are used to delineate reaction mechanisms, uncovering mother nature's chemical steps, physical phenomena and reactivity 1 . Many postulates, and sometimes heated debates, have been investigated and settled using the tools of this discipline. For example, the classic debate surrounding the norbornyl carbocation has only recently been settled with a low temperature (40 K) crystal structure 2 . Another is the controversy surrounding interpretation Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints.

This work investigates the interplay between the intramolecular B-N dative bonding and solvent insertion in various ortho-methylamino arylboronic acids in protic media. (11)B NMR experiments were conducted to study the effect that the degree of substitution of the amine group has on B-N bonding versus solvent insertion. It was found that there is a slight increase in the amount of B-N dative bonding on going from a tertiary to a secondary to a primary amine group, but that solvent insertion dominates in all cases of the boronate esters. A X-ray crystal structure gives further insight into the structure of the solvent-inserted boronate esters, showing that the inserted solvent has its hydrogen primarily on the amine. Lastly, studies of the use of boronate esters as receptors for simple alcohols and carboxylic acids are described.

The role of the ortho-aminomethyl functional group in phenyl boronic acids for sugar complexation is a topic of debate. To decipher its effect on the kinetics of boronate ester formation, we first performed pseudo-first order kinetics analyses at five pH values up to 4 mM in fructose, revealing a first-order kinetic dependence upon fructose. Under these conditions, the reaction is in equilibrium and does not reach completion, but at 50 mM fructose saturation is achieved revealing zero-order dependence upon fructose. This indicates rate-determining creation of an intermediate prior to reaction with fructose, which we propose involves leaving group departure of inserted solvent. Further, the region of kinetics displaying zero-order dependence has a kinetic isotope effect (KIE) of 1.42, showing involvement of a proton transfer in the leaving group departure. The ratio of forward and reverse rate constants branching from the intermediate shows that fructose is several thousand times more nucleophilic than the solvent. Overall, the data supports a mechanism where the o-aminomethyl group lowers the pKa of the proximal boronic acid and acts as a general-acid (as an ammonium) to facilitate leaving group departure. Consequently, by microscopic reversibility the resulting amine must perform general-base catalysis to deliver fructose.

Nature's use of sensor arrays in the mammalian olfactory and gustatory systems has encouraged supramolecular chemists to take a new approach to molecular recognition. Pattern-based recognition involves the use of sensor arrays to create fingerprints for analytes. The use of sensing arrays has paved the way for systems capable of identifying biological analytes that would have been difficult targets using the traditional "lock-and-key" approach to sensor design.

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