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Design, synthesis and application of anion receptors

Abstract

The selective recognition of anions has numerous applications in areas as diverse as the environment and medicine. Most of these applications require anion recognition to occur in a competitive aqueous environment, but the design of receptors capable of selective binding to anions in water is difficult, predominantly as a result of the high hydration energy of anionic species. Complex molecular architectures need to be synthesised to achieve this goal.

In natural systems, highly efficient and selective anion recognition is achieved through the use of large peptides and proteins that take advantage of the numerous H-bonding interactions available from a variety of amino acid side chains with additional contributions from the amide protons in the protein backbone. Metal-ligand interactions from protein-bound metal ions to anions are also common in biological anion binding. This has inspired our research into the development of synthetic anion receptors that combine both natural and non-natural binding motifs. The design and synthesis of novel anion receptors, based on macrocyclic and linear peptidic and peptidomimetic scaffolds, that are capable of selective anion recognition will be discussed, together with their applications.