Chalcogen-containing Protein and Nucleic Acid Derivatives – Synthesis and Applications

Abstract

Chalcogen analogues, which are synthetic derivatives of natural proteins or nucleic acids with a substitution of sulfur (S), selenium (Se), or tellurium (Te) at any specific positions, show unique biological activities different from the original biomolecules, thus stimulating interest of researchers and anticipating various applications. In this chapter, after briefly providing an overview of chalcogen-containing natural proteins and nucleic acids, recent advances in the chemical synthesis as well as the assessments of unique biological properties of chalcogen analogues are summarized, giving some notable examples.

Molecular Switching through Chalcogen-Bond-Induced Isomerization of Binuclear (Diaminocarbene)PdII Complexes

“…Recently, this phenomenon has been the subject of much research in the fields of polymer science [4][5][6], drug development [7,8], biochemistry [9][10][11][12], crystal engineering [13][14][15][16][17], and supramolecular chemistry [18][19][20]. The reason for this is that chalcogen bonds (as well as other non-covalent interactions) determine many practically significant physicochemical properties of chalcogen-containing compounds: conformational stabilization [21], molecular assembly [22][23][24], protein folding [25,26], molecular recognition [9,27], and even reactivity [28,29].…”