Nucleobase-functionalized peptides have attracted increasing interest because of their well-ordered secondary structures and stability toward enzymatic degradations. We have designed and synthesized nucleo aminooxy acids as novel building blocks for nucleopeptides. Four nucleo aminooxy acid derivatives with cytosine or thymine in the side chain linked by an amide or a triazole moiety have been synthesized from L-serine.Key words: nucleo aminooxy acids, nucleopeptides, N-oxy nucleopeptides, cytosine, thymine, amides, triazoles, L-serine, eliminations Nucleo amino acids are synthetic amino acids bearing nucleobases covalently linked to their side chains. Various peptides containing nucleo α-and β-amino acids have been reported as being able to form rigid and helical structures as well as well-defined double strands with complementary sequences. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] Moreover, nucleopeptides have recently emerged as a promising alternative to peptide nucleic acids, 8,9 able to penetrate into a cell nucleus without cytotoxic effects.
10Aminooxy acids are analogues of amino acids bearing an oxyamine function (O-NH 2 ) in the place of amine. Peptides of aminooxy acids have an ease of forming welldefined structures like α-, β-and γ-turns or helices thanks to intramolecular hydrogen-bond formation.
11,12It would therefore be interesting to synthesize nucleo aminooxy acids containing nucleobases on the side chain of aminooxy acids in order to study the secondary structure and DNA/RNA binding properties of the corresponding Noxy nucleopeptides, since both the N-oxy peptide and the nucleobases could contribute to structure organization. As part of a continuing program on the synthesis of sugarand nucleoside-derived aminooxy acids, [13][14][15][16][17] we report herein the synthesis of nucleo aminooxy acid derivatives with thymine or cytosine connected to the side chain of a β-aminooxy acid through either an amide or a triazole linkage (Figure 1). To the best of our knowledge, nucleo aminooxy acids have not been previously reported in the literature. The target nucleo aminooxy acid derivatives are accessible from the β-phthalimidooxy ester 8 (Scheme 1). This compound has been previously prepared from L-serine by Burke and co-workers. 18 We have synthesized the phthalimidooxy ester 7 from L-Ser-OMe (5) by N-tritylation and Mitsunobu reactions, and purified compounds 6 and 7 by simple precipitation, without column chromatography. Treatment of 7 with 36% hydrochloric acid in dichloromethane as reported led, however, to a mixture of compounds. Removal of the trityl group was then achieved with acetyl chloride in methanol, leading to the amine salt 8 in 65% yield. Coupling of 8 with N 4 -Cbz-protected cytosin-1-ylacetic acid 9 19 using BOP reagent furnished the cytosin-1-yl-substituted aminooxy ester 2a in 53% yield; however, reaction of 8 with thymin-1-ylacetic acid (14) 20 using EDC/HOAt led to the corresponding polar thymin-1-yl-substituted aminooxy ester which proved to be difficult to purify.We then decided to rep...