Oligopyrenotides: abiotic, polyanionic oligomers with nucleic acid-like structural properties.

Oligopyrenotides, abiotic oligomers that exhibit significant structural analogies to the nucleic acids, are described. They are composed of achiral, phosphodiester-linked pyrene building blocks and a single chiral 1,2-diaminocyclohexane unit. These oligomers form stable hybrids in aqueous solution. Hybridization is based on stacking interactions of the pyrene building blocks. They show thermal denaturation/renaturation behavior that closely resembles DNA and RNA hybridization. In addition, oligopyrenotides display salt-concentration-dependent structural polymorphism. Thus, they possess a number of structural attributes that are typical of nucleic acids and therefore may serve as model systems for the design of artificial self-replicating systems.