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Foldamers

Biomimetic and built to order

Synthetic oligomers could potentially expand beyond the functions offered by proteins and nucleic acids. However, this requires precise methods for controlling their folding and self-assembly. Now, it is shown that two drastically different supramolecular architectures can be fabricated from closely related sequences using a single biomimetic scaffold.

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Figure 1: Primary sequence, secondary structure and quaternary assembly in protein-mimetic oligoureas.

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Correspondence to W. Seth Horne.

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Horne, W. Biomimetic and built to order. Nature Chem 7, 858–859 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2385

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