drophilic domains attached to one end of the pore may
assure delivery to the vesicle by preventing competing pre-
cipitation from the water and enforce vectorial partitioning
and transmembrane orientation followed by parallel self-as-
sembly. Exploited to perfection in biology, these various
benefits from hydrophilic anchoring are rarely considered in
synthetic functional systems.[28–31] Herein, we report hydro-
philic anchoring of rigid-rod b-barrel pores, such as 1, as a
promising approach toward multicomponent sensors that
can operate at low concentrations with high selectivity
(Figure 1).
peptidic anion channels.[29] Moreover, cationic anchors were
preferred over anionic or neutral anchors because repulsion
from the cationic interior of pore 1 was considered as essen-
tial to prevent backfolding of the anchor into the pore.
Rigid-rod molecule 4 was envisioned for the parallel self-
assembly into transmembrane b-barrel pore 1 with hydro-
philic K4 anchors. This multiple-substituted p-octiphenyl 4
was synthesized in 32 steps from commercially available
starting materials, including 14 steps of very straightforward
peptide synthesis.[37] The key challenge of this synthesis was
to attach two different peptide strands to one rigid-rod scaf-
fold. p-Octiphenyl 5 with carboxylic acids that carry orthog-
onal benzyl and tert-butyl protecting groups was conceived
to address this problem (Scheme 1). The synthesis of this
key intermediate 5 by Suzuki coupling of the two differently
substituted phenyl termini 6 and 7 to the previously report-
ed p-sexiphenyl scaffold 8[30] appeared not to be problemat-
ic.
The K4-terminal fragment 6 was prepared from resorcinol
9. Protected as a benzyl ester, one bromoacetate 10 was in-
troduced first by Williamson ether synthesis. Selective
ortho-iodination of the obtained phenol 11 afforded the aryl
iodide 12. This substrate was needed to introduce the
second bromoacetate 13 with the orthogonal tert-butyl pro-
tecting group. Pinacolboronate 6 was obtained by Pd-cata-
lyzed conversion[38] of aryl iodide 14.
The other rod terminus 7 was synthesized following re-
cently reported procedures.[39] In brief, ortho-iodination of
methylresorcinol 15 afforded regioisomer 16 chemoselec-
tively. This reaction was followed by Williamson ether syn-
thesis with tert-butyl bromoacetate 13. The obtained aryl
iodide 17 was transformed via boronate 18 to give 7, which
benefits from the increased stability, easier purification, and
higher reactivity of the solid potassium trifluoroborates.[40]
The p-sexiphenyl 8 was selected as an ideal building block
to attach the terminal rod fragments 6 and 7 because of its
rapid accessibility from the commercially available biphenyl
19 and tert-butyl bromoacetate 13.[30] In brief, diazide 19 was
converted into diiodide 20 and dipinacolboronate 21. These
two monomers were then polymerized under Suzuki cou-
pling conditions. Because of poor solubility, p-sexiphenyl 22
could be isolated directly and in good yield from the reac-
tion mixture. Rod 22 was treated with BBr3 to give oligo-
phenol 23. This rod 23 was treated with tert-butyl bromoace-
tate 13 to yield the target intermediate 8. Attachment of
fragments 7 to one end of the p-sexiphenyl 8 by Suzuki cou-
pling was accomplished following previously reported proce-
dures.[39] The obtained p-septiphenyl 24 was subjected to an-
other Suzuki coupling with the K4-terminal fragment 6. The
product was the desired p-octiphenyl scaffold with three dif-
ferent substituents, two of them being chemically differenti-
ated by orthogonal protecting groups.
Figure 1. Self-assembly from monomer 4 and the theoretical active struc-
ture of pore 1 with hydrophilic anchors together with anchor-free control
pores 2 and 3. b Sheets are shown as gray arrows in the theoretical pore
structure, and in the chemical structure, the external amino acid residues
are indicated within an empty circle, whereas the internal residues are in-
dicated within a filled circle (the residues are indicated with single-letter
abbreviations, see Scheme 2 for full structures).
Results and Discussion
In pore 1, which is introduced in this report, the rigid-rod
b barrel of the classical[32–36] pores 2 and 3 is elongated with
four of Tomichꢁs hydrophilic tetralysine (K4) anchors
(Figure 1).[29] Rigid-rod b barrels in general consist of p-octi-
phenyl staves and b-sheet hoops.[32,33] The selected peptide
sequence LRLHL produces a hydrophobic outer pore sur-
face (LLL) for contacts with the surrounding bilayer mem-
brane. Functional arginine–histidine (RH) dyads are placed
at the inner pore surface to interact with analytes passing
by, through the pore, and across the membrane.[12,13,32,33]
Except for the NMR tags in position 16 and 86, the
12,22,33,42,53,62,73,82 substitution pattern of the p-octiphenyl
stave in pore 2 is identical with that in pore 1.[34] The charac-
The NMR spectra of asymmetric oligomers such as 5 can
be challenging to fully understand because the presence of
several quasi-identical repeats causes extensive signal clus-
tering.[41] However, the recording of high-resolution
2D HSQC and HMBC NMR spectra allowed unambiguous
teristics of pore
2
and pore
3 with the classical
13,23,32,43,52,63,72,83 motif are essentially identical.[34–36]
The cationic K4 anchors were selected because they were
best in an extensive optimization with readily accessible
1948
ꢀ 2008 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Chem. Eur. J. 2008, 14, 1947 – 1953