Perfecting self-organization of covalent and supramolecular mega macromolecules via sequence-defined and monodisperse components

Identifier:  imarina:9138917

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/imarina9138917

Authors:  Percec, V; Xiao, Q; Lligadas, G; Monteiro, MJ

Abstract:
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd Biological macromolecules such as nucleic acids and proteins are homochiral, display monodisperse chain length with mega, multimillion, molecular weight and encode functions by their precise sequence via self-organization. The functions of biological macromolecules are either independent on molecular weight or, like in the case of ribosome, are programmed by the self-organization of their mega molecular weight. In spite of the fact that Staudinger coined the name macromolecule 100 years ago, self-organizable synthetic covalent and supramolecular mega macromolecules exhibiting the symptoms of biological macromolecules started to emerge only recently. This personal perspective will discuss, with examples mostly from our laboratory, methodologies for the synthesis of self-organizable covalent and supramolecular mega macromolecules for which functions are encoded, programmed and perfected via homochiral, sequence-defined and monodisperse components. Methodologies to generate them together with historical developments will be briefly discussed.