Distinguish Professor Takuzo AIDA and His Group Construct World’s First “Helical Structure” Only Theoretically Possible Before
A joint research group led by Professor Takuzo Aida, Distinguished Professor of Tokyo College, Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Tokyo, has succeeded in constructing for the first time the crystal structure of an artificial amino acid-derived “α-helix structure,” which had not been clearly confirmed before, even though it was theoretically possible. This result demonstrates the possibility of designing new materials in which molecules self-assemble to form nano-sized tube structures, and also shows that chemical species that are normally unstable and cannot be extracted stably can be synthesized into network structures (metal-organic structures (MOFs)[5]). MOF (Metal-Organic Framework) [5]) are usually unstable and cannot be extracted stably.
The study was published online on May 15 prior to publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Information
- Title：An α-Helically Folded α-Aminoisobutyric Acid (Aib) Oligomer that Assembles into a Metal–Peptide Superhelical Nanotube
- Authors： Wei Yuan, Jenny Pirillo, Yuh Hijikata, Takuzo Aida, Hiroshi Sato
- Journal：Journal of the American Chemical Society
- DOI：https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5c03534
This study was conducted with the support of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) under the FOREST Program (Grant Number: JPMJFR221T), and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) through Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Grant Numbers: 18H05260, 20H02705, and 24K01463).
Read the press release (Japanese) and the article from the Hiroshima University website(Japanese).
