Abstract
Mimicking the superstructures and properties of spherical biological encapsulants such as viral capsids1 and ferritin2 offers viable pathways to understand their chiral assemblies and functional roles in living systems. However, stereospecific assembly of artificial polyhedra with mechanical properties and guest-binding attributes akin to biological encapsulants remains a formidable challenge. Here we report the stereospecific assembly of dynamic supramolecular snub cubes from 12 helical macrocycles, which are held together by 144 weak C–H hydrogen bonds3. The enantiomerically pure snub cubes, which have external diameters of 5.1 nm, contain 2,712 atoms and chiral cavities with volumes of 6,215 Å3. The stereospecific assembly of left- and right-handed snub cubes was achieved by means of a hierarchical chirality transfer protocol4, which was streamlined by diastereoselective crystallization. In addition to their reversible photochromic behaviour, the snub cubes exhibit photocontrollable elasticity and hardness in their crystalline states. The snub cubes can accommodate numerous small guest molecules simultaneously and encapsulate two different guest molecules separately inside the uniquely distinct compartments in their frameworks. This research expands the scope of artificial supramolecular assemblies to imitate the chiral superstructures, dynamic features and binding properties of spherical biomacromolecules and also establishes a protocol for construction of crystalline materials with photocontrollable mechanical properties.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 3443 |
| Pages (from-to) | 347-353 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Nature |
| Volume | 637 |
| Issue number | 8045 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 9 2025 |
Funding
We thank Tianjin University, the University of Hong Kong and Northwestern University for supporting this research. Some data collections were carried out in the Integrated Molecular Structure Education and Research Centre (IMSERC) facility at Northwestern University, which receives support from the Soft and Hybrid Nanotechnology Experimental (SHyNE) Resource (NSF ECCS-1542205) and Northwestern University. The work at Northwestern University on separating chiral compounds by chiral high-performance liquid chromatography was supported partially by the Center for Bio-Inspired Energy Science (CBES), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences (no. DE-SC0000989). We also thank C. Zhu at Hefei University of Technology for support relating to the high-performance liquid chromatographic separations. We thank Z. Zhang at Nankai University, X. Li and Z. Chen at Shenzhen University for technical support relating to the single-crystal X-ray diffraction investigations. H.W. and Y.W. acknowledge funding support from the Excellent Young Scientists Fund Program (Overseas) of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52473192). L.\u00D0. acknowledges the European Union (ERC, PhotoDark, 101077698) for funding. M.Y.Y. and W.A.G. thank the funding support from NIH (R01HL155532) and NSF (CBET 2311117). W.H. acknowledges funding support from the National Key Research and Development Program (2022YFB3603800) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52073210 and U21A6002). Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Computations were performed at the Quest HPC Cluster at Northwestern University and California Institute of Technology, as well as the HPC facility of the Computational Chemistry Community of Padova (C3P). We thank\u00A0Tianjin University, the University of Hong Kong and Northwestern University for supporting this research.\u00A0Some data collections were carried out in the Integrated Molecular Structure Education and Research Centre (IMSERC)\u00A0facility at Northwestern University, which\u00A0receives support from the Soft and Hybrid Nanotechnology Experimental (SHyNE) Resource (NSF ECCS-1542205)\u00A0and Northwestern University. The work at Northwestern University on separating chiral compounds by chiral high-performance liquid chromatography was\u00A0supported partially by the Center for Bio-Inspired Energy Science (CBES), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US\u00A0Department of Energy\u00A0(DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences (no. DE-SC0000989). We also\u00A0thank C. Zhu at Hefei University of Technology for support relating to the high-performance liquid chromatographic separations. We thank Z. Zhang at Nankai University, X. Li and Z. Chen at Shenzhen University for technical support relating to the single-crystal X-ray diffraction investigations. H.W. and Y.W. acknowledge funding support from the Excellent Young Scientists Fund Program (Overseas) of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52473192).\u00A0L.\u00D0. acknowledges the European Union (ERC, PhotoDark, 101077698) for funding.\u00A0M.Y.Y. and W.A.G. thank the funding support from NIH (R01HL155532) and NSF (CBET 2311117). W.H.\u00A0acknowledges funding support from the National Key Research and Development Program (2022YFB3603800) and the\u00A0National Natural Science Foundation of China\u00A0(52073210 and U21A6002). Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Computations were performed at the Quest HPC Cluster at Northwestern University and California Institute of Technology, as well as the HPC facility of the Computational Chemistry Community of Padova (C3P).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General