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Induced-fit catalysis of corannulene bowl-to-bowl inversion

Abstract

Stereoelectronic complementarity between the active site of an enzyme and the transition state of a reaction is one of the tenets of enzyme catalysis. This report illustrates the principles of enzyme catalysis (first proposed by Pauling and Jencks) through a well-defined model system that has been fully characterized crystallographically, computationally and kinetically. Catalysis of the bowl-to-bowl inversion processes that pertain to corannulene is achieved by combining ground-state destabilization and transition-state stabilization within the cavity of an extended tetracationic cyclophane. This synthetic receptor fulfils a role reminiscent of a catalytic antibody by stabilizing the planar transition state for the bowl-to-bowl inversion of (ethyl)corannulene (which accelerates this process by a factor of ten at room temperature) by an induced-fit mechanism first formulated by Koshland.

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Figure 1: Structural formulae and solid-state structures.
Figure 2: Ground state versus transition state.
Figure 3: NMR spectroscopy with corannulene-d10.
Figure 4: NMR spectroscopy with ethylcorannulene.
Figure 5: Energy profile.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank M. Stuparu for synthesizing bromocorannulene and C. L. Stern for performing the X-ray crystallographic analysis. This research is part of the Joint Center of Excellence in Integrated Nano-Systems (JCIN) at King Abdul-Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) and Northwestern University (NU) (Project 34-947). The authors would like to thank both KACST and NU for their continued support of this research. We also acknowledge support from the World Class University Program (R-31-2008-000-10055-0) in Korea. M.J. gratefully acknowledges The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and the Marie Curie Cofund Action (Rubicon Fellowship). N.L.S. and E.J.D. are supported by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. J.C.B. is supported by a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship from the Department of Defense and gratefully acknowledges receipt of a Ryan Fellowship from the NU International Institute for Nanotechnology. K.K.B. and J.S.S. gratefully acknowledge the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Qian Ren Scholar Program of China and the Synergetic Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin).

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M.J., N.L.S., J.C.B., J.F.S. and J.S.S. conceived the project and prepared the manuscript. M.J., J.C.B., A.M.B. and E.J.D. synthesized the different molecules studied in this work. M.J. and N.L.S. carried out NMR studies. K.K.B. performed DFT calculations. M.J., N.L.S., J.C.B., K.K.B., J.F.S. and J.S.S. investigated the bowl-to-bowl inversion process.

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Correspondence to Jay S. Siegel.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary information

Supplementary information (PDF 4816 kb)

Supplementary information

Crystallographic data for compound corannulene ExBox•4PF6(MeCN)7 (CIF 2380 kb)

Supplementary information

Supplementary pdb file for the optimized geometry (B97D/Def2-TZVPP) of the ground state of corannulene-ExBox4+ complex in the gas phase. (PDB 9 kb)

Supplementary information

Supplementary pdb file for the optimized geometry (B97D/Def2-TZVPP) of the ground state of corannulene-ExBox4+ complex in Me2CO. (PDB 9 kb)

Supplementary information

Supplementary pdb file for the optimized geometry (B97D/Def2-TZVPP) of the transition state of corannulene-ExBox4+ complex in the gas phase. (PDB 9 kb)

Supplementary information

Supplementary pdb file for the optimized geometry (B97D/Def2-TZVPP) of the transition state of corannulene-ExBox4+ complex in Me2CO (PDB 9 kb)

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Juríček, M., Strutt, N., Barnes, J. et al. Induced-fit catalysis of corannulene bowl-to-bowl inversion. Nature Chem 6, 222–228 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1842

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