College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu 225002, China.
Nat Commun. 2016 Jun 27;7:12042. doi: 10.1038/ncomms12042.
The locations and arrangements of carotenoids at the subcellular level are responsible for their designated functions, which reinforces the necessity of developing methods for constructing carotenoid-based suprastructures beyond the molecular level. Because carotenoids lack the binding sites necessary for controlled interactions, functional structures based on carotenoids are not easily obtained. Here, we show that carotene-based suprastructures were formed via the induction of pillararene through a phase-transfer-mediated host-guest interaction. More importantly, similar to the main component in natural photosynthesis, complexes could be synthesized after chlorophyll was introduced into the carotene-based suprastructure assembly process. Remarkably, compared with molecular carotene or chlorophyll, this synthesized suprastructure exhibits some photocatalytic activity when exposed to light, which can be exploited for photocatalytic reaction studies of energy capture and solar conversion in living organisms.
类胡萝卜素在亚细胞水平上的位置和排列负责其指定的功能，这加强了构建超越分子水平的基于类胡萝卜素的超结构的必要性。由于类胡萝卜素缺乏用于受控相互作用的结合位点，因此基于类胡萝卜素的功能结构不容易获得。在这里，我们表明，通过相转移介导的主客体相互作用诱导柱芳烃，可以形成基于类胡萝卜素的超结构。更重要的是，类似于天然光合作用中的主要成分，在将叶绿素引入类胡萝卜素基超结构组装过程后，可以合成复合物。值得注意的是，与分子类胡萝卜素或叶绿素相比，当暴露在光下时，这种合成的超结构表现出一些光催化活性，可用于研究生物体中能量捕获和太阳能转换的光催化反应。
