Abstract
The helicity of biological macromolecules such as DNA and proteins is largely governed by the homochirality of their components (D-sugars and L-amino acids). In polymer and supramolecular chemistry, control of helicity is an attractive goal because of possible applications in materials science, chemical sensing and enantioselective catalysis1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13. We reported recently that macromolecular helicity can be induced in a polymer by an optically active amine14. Here we show that this helicity can be ‘memorized’ when the amine is replaced by various achiral amines. Although the maintenance of helicity in the polymer is not perfect, it can ‘repair’ itself over time. Small structural changes in the achiral amines influence the efficiency of helicity retention markedly.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Y. Maeda for his preliminary experimental support. We thank T. Sato, K.Akiyoshi and T. Aida for discussions. This work was supported in part by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture, Japan.
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Yashima, E., Maeda, K. & Okamoto, Y. Memory of macromolecular helicity assisted by interaction with achiral small molecules. Nature 399, 449–451 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/20900
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/20900
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