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  • Review Article
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The mechanisms of boronate ester formation and fluorescent turn-on in ortho-aminomethylphenylboronic acids

Nature Chemistry volume 11, pages 768–778 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

ortho-Aminomethylphenylboronic acids are used in receptors for carbohydrates and various other compounds containing vicinal diols. The presence of the o-aminomethyl group enhances the affinity towards diols at neutral pH, and the manner in which this group plays this role has been a topic of debate. Further, the aminomethyl group is believed to be involved in the turn-on of the emission properties of appended fluorophores upon diol binding. In this treatise, a uniform picture emerges for the role of this group: it primarily acts as an electron-withdrawing group that lowers the pKa of the neighbouring boronic acid thereby facilitating diol binding at neutral pH. The amine appears to play no role in the modulation of the fluorescence of appended fluorophores in the protic-solvent-inserted form of the boronic acid/boronate ester. Instead, fluorescence turn-on can be consistently tied to vibrational-coupled excited-state relaxation (a loose-bolt effect). Overall, this Review unifies and discusses the existing data as of 2019 whilst also highlighting why o-aminomethyl groups are so widely used, and the role they play in carbohydrate sensing using phenylboronic acids.

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Fig. 1: Chemical reactions and primary data relevant to the topics discussed in this Review.
Fig. 2: The assignment of pKa values that would be associated with the three mechanistic postulates described in this Review.
Fig. 3
Fig. 4: Mechanistic considerations for the role of the o-aminomethyl group.
Fig. 5: Reactions and data relevant to the discussion of photophysics of the systems described in this Review.
Fig. 6: Further data and reactions related to the photophysics of the systems described in this Review.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support for the several years of their work in the area of boronic acids. E.V.A. is grateful to the NSF (CHE-0716049, CHE-1212971), the Welch Foundation (F-1151) and the Welch Regents Chair (F-0046). B.W. acknowledges the Georgia Research Alliance, Georgia Cancer Coalition and the NIH throughout the years for their support of the boronic acid-relate projects (GM084933, CA159567, DK55062, CA88343, NO1-CO-27184, CA113917, CA123329 and GM086925). T.D.J. wishes to thank the Royal Society for a Wolfson Research Merit Award.

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  1. The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaolong Sun

  2. Department of Chemistry, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Xiaolong Sun, Brette M. Chapin, Pedro Metola, Byron Collins & Eric V. Anslyn

  3. Department of Chemistry and Center for Diagnostics and Therapeutics, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Binghe Wang

  4. Department of Chemistry, University of Bath, Bath, UK

    Tony D. James

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Although the writing of the paper was spearheaded by E.V.A., the contents are a collaboration with T.D.J. and B.W.; X.S., B.M.C., P.M. and B.C. all contributed with experimental data and writing.

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Correspondence to Binghe Wang, Tony D. James or Eric V. Anslyn.

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Sun, X., Chapin, B.M., Metola, P. et al. The mechanisms of boronate ester formation and fluorescent turn-on in ortho-aminomethylphenylboronic acids. Nat. Chem. 11, 768–778 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-019-0314-x

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