title: Creating nanocavities of tunable sizes: hollow helices.
abstract: A general strategy for creating nanocavities with tunable sizes based on the folding of unnatural oligomers is presented. The backbones of these oligomers are rigidified by localized, three-center intramolecular hydrogen bonds, which lead to well-defined hollow helical conformations. Changing the curvature of the oligomer backbone leads to the adjustment of the interior cavity size. Helices with interior cavities of 10 A to >30 A across, the largest thus far formed by the folding of unnatural foldamers, are generated. Cavities of these sizes are usually seen at the tertiary and quaternary structural levels of proteins. The ability to tune molecular dimensions without altering the underlying topology is seen in few natural and unnatural foldamer systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. bgong@chem.buffalo.edu
authors.forename: Bing
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.forename: Huaqiang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Lihua
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.forename: Yaohua
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Shizhi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Mako
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Furukawa
authors.forename: Rubén D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Parra
authors.forename: Andrey Y
authors.initials: AY
authors.lastname: Kovalevsky
authors.forename: Jeffrey L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Mills
authors.forename: Ewa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Skrzypczak-Jankun
authors.forename: Suzana
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Martinovic
authors.forename: Richard D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Chong
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Szyperski
authors.forename: Xiao Cheng
authors.initials: XC
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.forename: Lihua
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yua
mesh_terms: D006860:Hydrogen Bonding; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D036103:Nanotechnology