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Related Concept Videos

Chirality in Nature02:30

Chirality in Nature

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Chirality is the most intriguing yet essential facet of nature, governing life’s biochemical processes and precision. It can be observed from a snail shell pattern in a macroscopic world to an amino acid, the minutest building block of life. Most of the snails around the world have right-coiled shells because of the intrinsic chirality in their genes. All the amino acids present in the human body exist in an enantiomerically pure state, except for glycine - the sole achiral amino acid.
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Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur02:30

Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur

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Chirality is most prevalent in carbon-based tetrahedral compounds, but this important facet of molecular symmetry extends to sp3-hybridized nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur centers, including trivalent molecules with lone pairs. Here, the lone pair behaves as a functional group in addition to the other three substituents to form an analogous tetrahedral center that can be chiral.
A consequence of chirality is the need for enantiomeric resolution. While this is theoretically possible for all...
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Prochirality02:05

Prochirality

5.4K
The concept of prochirality leads to the nomenclature of the individual faces of a molecule and plays a crucial role in the enantioselective reaction. It is a concept where two or more achiral molecules react to produce chiral products. A typical process is the reaction of an achiral ketone to generate a chiral alcohol. Here, the achiral reactant reacts with an achiral reducing agent, sodium borohydride, to generate an equimolar mixture of the chiral enantiomers of the product. For example, an...
5.4K
Stereoisomerism02:52

Stereoisomerism

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Isomerism in Complexes
Isomers are different chemical species that have the same chemical formula.
Transition metal complexes often exist as geometric isomers, in which the same atoms are connected through the same types of bonds but with differences in their orientation in space. Coordination complexes with two different ligands in the cis and trans positions from a ligand of interest form isomers. For example, the octahedral [Co(NH3)4Cl2]+ ion has two isomers (Figure 1) In the cis...
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Complexation Equilibria: The Chelate Effect01:19

Complexation Equilibria: The Chelate Effect

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In complexation reactions, metal atoms or cations interact with ligands to form donor-acceptor adducts called metal complexes. Ligands that bind through one donor site are monodentate, ligands with two donor sites are bidentate, and those with more than two donor sites are polydentate ligands. For example, ethylene diamine is a bidentate ligand that binds through two nitrogen donor atoms, forming a five-membered ring. EDTA is a polydentate ligand that binds through four oxygen and two nitrogen...
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Chirality02:25

Chirality

33.3K
Chirality is a term that describes the lack of mirror symmetry in an object. In other words, chiral objects cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, our feet are chiral, as the mirror image of the left foot, the right foot, cannot be superposed on the left foot.
Chiral objects exhibit a sense of handedness when they interact with another chiral object. For example, our left foot can only fit in the left shoe and not in the right shoe. Achiral objects — objects that have...
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Derivatization of Protein Crystals with I3C using Random Microseed Matrix Screening
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Chirality-selected phase behaviour in ionic polypeptide complexes.

Sarah L Perry1, Lorraine Leon2, Kyle Q Hoffmann3

  • 1Institute for Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.

Nature Communications
|January 15, 2015
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Chirality dictates the solid or fluid state of polyelectrolyte complexes. Purely chiral polypeptides form solid complexes, while racemic mixtures result in fluid complexes, offering new material properties.

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Area of Science:

  • Soft matter physics
  • Polymer chemistry
  • Supramolecular chemistry

Background:

  • Polyelectrolyte complexes are promising for self-assembled soft matter.
  • The factors influencing the solid or liquid phase of these complexes are not fully understood.
  • Ionic polypeptides offer a model system to study stereochemistry's impact on complex formation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of chirality in the phase behavior of polyelectrolyte complexes.
  • To understand how stereochemistry influences the self-assembly of oppositely charged polypeptides.
  • To explore chirality as a tool for controlling material properties in polyelectrolyte systems.

Main Methods:

  • Mixing dilute solutions of oppositely charged polypeptides.
  • Utilizing electrostatic and hydrogen-bonding interactions for complex formation.
  • Observing the resulting complex phase (solid or liquid) based on polypeptide chirality.

Main Results:

  • Chirality was identified as the determining factor for the solid or fluid state of polyelectrolyte complexes.
  • Fluid complexes formed when at least one polypeptide was racemic, disrupting hydrogen-bonding networks.
  • Pairs of purely chiral polypeptides formed compact, fibrillar solids with a beta-sheet structure.
  • Similar behavior was observed in micelles of polypeptide block copolymers, influencing aggregate core properties.

Conclusions:

  • Chirality is a critical, exploitable parameter for controlling the phase state and properties of polyelectrolyte complexes.
  • The findings provide a new mechanism for designing self-assembled soft materials with tunable characteristics.
  • Stereochemistry offers a versatile approach to manipulate material properties in polyelectrolyte complexation and related systems.