Biological macromolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates and their conjugates to lipids are the most common building blocks produced by nature. Their properties are determined by a perfect arrangement of their atoms in their structure and in their complex assemblies. Even though they are pervasively used in our daily lives and in many health, defense and other technological applications, synthetic polymers are not able to match the properties of metals and biological macromolecules. This research program aims to use biological principles in the construction of polymers and their complex assemblies to increase the level of structural precision of synthetic polymers to that of metals and natural macromolecules and expand their applications in daily life to the precision and sophistication encountered in biological systems. The project involves design, synthesis, and characterization of macromolecules to a variety of complex assemblies, followed by study of their structure and properties. This project will provide interdisciplinary education for high school, undergraduate, graduate students and postdocs, including minorities, at the interface of disciplines including organic, polymer, supramolecular synthesis, catalysis, physics, biology, synthetic biology, nanoscience, nanomedicine, and supercomputing. Group members will work in the laboratories of the PI and colleagues at Penn, collaborated with scientists in the US and abroad, and interact with industry. The principles and lessons learned from this project will be applicable to scientific, industrial and societal complex systems.
PART 2: TECHNICAL SUMMARY
Complex assemblies generated from metal atoms and from large biological macromolecules are strikingly dissimilar as concepts but identical in their extraordinary level of structural perfection and functions. Synthetic covalent and supramolecular polymers have statistical chain length distribution, chirality, composition and sequence. Therefore, they cannot provide the level of structural perfection and properties of inorganic and biological assemblies. This project will use monodisperse, homochiral and sequence-defined components to elucidate principles required to produce noncovalent-supramolecular and covalent polymers that will self-organize into complex assemblies exhibiting the precision of inorganic and biological assemblies. The following topics will be investigated: (1) The principles of self-organization of Frank-Kasper phases will be elucidated; these are seen in metals, metal alloys, some gases, lipids and even in some viruses and recently also in narrow molecular-weight-distribution polymers, monodisperse polymer components, and supramolecular polymers. Together with their supramolecular orientational memory Frank-Kasper phases will provide a first access to biological precision. (2) The generality of the cogwheel double-helix, hat-shape deracemizing and “rigid†solid-angle tobacco mosaic virus-like supramolecular helical polymerizations accompanied by deracemization will be investigated and elucidated. They will provide homochiral assemblies, of biological precision and even higher, containing sequence-defined and monodisperse components obtained by deracemization. (3) The scope and limitations of self-interrupted living polymerization for the synthesis of monodisperse biological-like polymers by non-iterative methods will be investigated and elucidated. Alternative methodologies for the synthesis of monodisperse polymers will also be explored. .
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
