Commercialized oligosaccharides
such as GM1 are useful for biological
applications but generally expensive. Thus, facile access to an effective
alternative is desired. Glycopolymers displaying both carbohydrate
and hydrophobic units are promising materials as alternatives to oligosaccharides.
Prediction of the appropriate polymer structure as an oligosaccharide
mimic is difficult, and screening of the many candidates (glycopolymer
library) is required. However, repeating polymerization manipulation
for each polymer sample to prepare the glycopolymer library is time-consuming.
Herein, we report a facile preparation of the glycopolymer library
of GM1 mimics by photoinduced electron/energy transfer-reversible
addition–fragmentation chain-transfer (PET-RAFT) polymerization.
Glycopolymers displaying galactose units were synthesized in various
ratios of hydrophobic acrylamide derivatives. The synthesized glycopolymers
were immobilized on a gold surface, and the interactions with cholera
toxin B subunits (CTB) were analyzed using surface plasmon resonance
imaging (SPRI). The screening by SPRI revealed the correlation between
the log
P
values of the hydrophobic monomers and
the interactions of the glycopolymers with CTB, and the appropriate
polymer structure as a GM1 mimic was determined. The combination of
the one-time preparation and the fast screening of the glycopolymer
library provides a new strategy to access the synthetic materials
for critical biomolecular recognition.