Models of higher-order structure: foldamers and beyond

Van Der Waals Interactions and the Hydrophobic Effect

“…There is an expansive list of foldamers designed for a wide range of applications, including cell permeation, membrane disruption, discrete molecular recognition, and selective reaction with encapsulated guests [58][59][60][61][62][63]. Likewise, a wide variety of subunits have been used to build foldamers, including steroids [64][65][66], aromatic oligoamides [67], β-peptides [58,61,62], and m-phenylene ethynylenes [63,[68][69][70].…”

Evolution of Helical Foldamers

“…Since the pioneering reports by Gellman and Seebach on β-peptides [1][2][3][4], publications on unnatural oligomers that fold into well-defined secondary structures (foldamers) have increased dramatically [5][6][7][8]. Recent progress has been made in designing pseudo-biological polymers (or oligomers) which fold into well defined secondary structures.…”

“…While it is difficult to cover all aspects of various foldamers, this review will mainly focus on selected examples of helical foldamers to illustrate the evolution of this field. For comprehensive coverage, the readers should consult a number of outstanding reviews published in recent years [5][6][7][8].…”

β-Peptide foldamer helices with tailored diameters

“…Various helically ordered β-peptides (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14) were designed to map different structuring effects on the preferred secondary structure and reveal the possibility of higher-order motifs.…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]13 In the absence of structural motifs, many recognition, transport and signal transduction or receptor-binding processes can not be implemented, and an understanding of the control over their specific well-organized 3D structure is therefore indispensable. 3,4,7 Foldamers are regarded as synthetic polymer architectures that have the feature of adopting well-defined periodic compact structures, and could therefore be rivals of the natural polymer systems both in their functions and applications.…”