Precision Macromolecular Chemistry, Institut Charles Sadron , UPR22-CNRS, 23 rue du Loess, BP84047, 67034 Strasbourg Cedex 2, France.
Acc Chem Res. 2013 Nov 19;46(11):2696-705. doi: 10.1021/ar400097a. Epub 2013 Jul 25.
Synthetic polymer materials are currently limited by their inability to store information in their chains, unlike some well-characterized biopolymers. Nucleic acids store and transmit genetic information, and amino acids encode the complex tridimensional structures and functions within proteins. To confer similar properties on synthetic materials, researchers must develop"writing" mechanisms, facile chemical pathways that allow control over the primary structure of synthetic polymer chains. The most obvious way to control the primary structure is to connect monomer units one-by-one in a given order using iterative chemistry. Although such synthesis strategies are commonly used to produce peptides and nucleic acids, they produce limited yields and are much slower than natural polymerization mechanisms. An alternative strategy would be to use multiblock copolymers with blocks that have specified sequences. In this case, however, the basic storage element is not a single molecular unit, but a longer block composed of several repeating units. However, the synthesis of multiblock copolymers is long and tedious. Therefore, researchers will need to develop other strategies for writing information onto polymer chains. In this Account, I describe our recent progress in the development of sequence controlled polymerization methods. Although our research focuses on different strategies, we have emphasized sequence-regulation in chain-growth polymerization processes. Chain-growth polymerizations, particularly radical polymerization, are very convenient methods for synthesizing polymers. However, in most cases, such approaches do not lead to controlled monomer sequences. During the last five years, we have shown that controlled/living chain-growth polymerization mechanisms offer interesting advantages for sequence regulation. In such mechanisms, the chains form gradually over time, and therefore the primary structure can be tuned by using time-controlled monomer additions. For example, the addition of small amounts of acceptor comonomers, such as N-substituted maleimides, during the controlled radical polymerization of a large excess of donor monomer, such as styrene, allows the writing of information onto polymer chains in a robust manner. Even with these advances, this strategy is not perfect and presents some of the drawbacks of chain-growth polymerizations, such as the formation of chain-to-chain sequence defects. On the other hand, this approach is experimentally easy, rapid, scalable, and very versatile.
合成聚合物材料目前受到其链中无法存储信息的限制,而某些特征明确的生物聚合物则可以做到这一点。核酸存储并传递遗传信息,而氨基酸则对蛋白质中的复杂三维结构和功能进行编码。为了在合成材料中赋予类似的性质,研究人员必须开发“写入”机制,即简便的化学途径,以便能够控制合成聚合物链的一级结构。控制一级结构的最明显方法是使用迭代化学,以给定的顺序逐个连接单体单元。尽管此类合成策略通常用于生产肽和核酸,但它们的产率有限,而且比自然聚合机制慢得多。另一种策略是使用具有指定序列的多嵌段共聚物。然而,在这种情况下,基本存储单元不是单个分子单元,而是由几个重复单元组成的较长嵌段。但是,多嵌段共聚物的合成既冗长又繁琐。因此,研究人员将需要开发其他在聚合物链上写入信息的策略。在本综述中,我描述了我们在开发序列可控聚合方法方面的最新进展。尽管我们的研究重点不同,但我们强调了链增长聚合过程中的序列调节。链增长聚合,特别是自由基聚合,是合成聚合物的非常方便的方法。然而,在大多数情况下,这种方法不会导致受控的单体序列。在过去的五年中,我们已经表明,可控/活性链增长聚合机制为序列调节提供了有趣的优势。在这种机制中,链随着时间的推移逐渐形成,因此可以通过时间控制单体添加来调整一级结构。例如,在大量供体单体(例如苯乙烯)的受控自由基聚合过程中,添加少量的受体共聚单体(例如 N-取代的马来酰亚胺),可以以稳健的方式将信息写入聚合物链。尽管有这些进展,但这种策略并不完美,并且存在一些链增长聚合的缺点,例如链间序列缺陷的形成。另一方面,这种方法在实验上易于操作、快速、可扩展且非常通用。