[supermolecule] Rebek / Yu Yang, Professor of Shanghai University, published important research results on PNAs twice recently

Recently, the research team led by Professor Rebek and Professor Yu Yang of the center for supramolecular chemistry and catalysis of Shanghai University published two research papers on PNAs: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, with the topics of "recognition with metallic cavitans" and "relative" hydrophilicities of cis and trans formamides”。 The Research Center for supramolecular chemistry and catalysis of Shanghai University and the Department of chemistry of the College of science are the first authors and corresponding authors The supramolecular chemistry of water phase is closely related to the life system, which attracts the chemists' extensive research interest However, although there are many kinds of macrocyclic bodies, there are few water-soluble macrocyclic bodies The Rebek team has been committed to the development of water-soluble functionalized macrocyclic hosts They have designed and synthesized the main molecules of ureyl, octamethylureyl and pyrazinyl calixarenes respectively for the first time, and systematically studied the structure of the host and the properties of the cavity host and guest Secondary formamide exists widely in nature, but due to the low energy barrier between CIS and trans isomers, it is difficult to separate them A lot of research is limited to the mixture of CIS and trans isomers The team used the hydrophobic cavities of octamethylurea calixarenes as the main body to distinguish the hydrophilic differences between the secondary formamide isomers In this study, NMR method was used to detect that the cis isomer is more likely to enter the cavity, which shows that the CIS formamide is more hydrophobic than the corresponding trans isomer The advantage of this supramolecular method is that it does not need stable and separable compounds for determination Li Yongsheng and Zhu Yujie, master students of the team, are the co first authors of the article, and Professor Rebek and Professor Yu Yang are the corresponding authors of the article (source: PNAs) in addition, the effective recognition of polar molecules in water phase is recognized as a problem in the field of supramolecular chemistry The team designed and synthesized new pyrazinyl calixarenes and coordinated them with palladium to form new metal macrocyclic compounds The results show that the metal macrocyclic compounds can effectively recognize polar small molecules such as ethanol and acetic acid in water, but only macrocyclic compounds can not recognize such polar small molecules In addition, the metal can effectively recognize alkanes and amphiphilic molecules Theoretical calculation shows that the interaction of palladium with pyrazinyl changes the size and configuration of the main cavity, enhances the stability of the host guest complex and improves the recognition performance of the main body It is expected that the metal macrocyclic compounds can be used as sensors to detect alcohol in the future Dr Faiz ur Rahman is the first author of the paper, and Professor Rebek and Professor Yu Yang are the corresponding authors (source: PNAs) research work has been supported by NSFC, Shanghai University peak plateau discipline construction, Shanghai Municipal Education Commission Oriental project and Shanghai high level local university innovation team "bionic intelligent polymer materials" and other projects Up to now, since its establishment in September 2015, the research center of supramolecular chemistry and catalysis of Shanghai University has been engaged in PNAS (2 articles), J am Chem SOC (4 articles), angel Chem Int ed (5 articles), Chemical Science (2 articles), chemical review (1 article), chemical society review (1 article) and account of chemical research（ 1) a total of 16 papers were published in the top Chemical Journals and Shanghai University was the first unit, which made an important contribution to the development of chemistry discipline in Shanghai University.