Ruijiao Dong
Imperial College London, UK
Title: Synthesis and application of precision biopolymers with perfectly defined monomer sequence
Biography
Biography: Ruijiao Dong
Abstract
Nucleic acids and proteins are exactly sequence-defined biomacromolecules who’s specifically ordered sequences of nucleotide or amino acid monomers create complexity and assure the structural and functional diversity required for living organisms. Monomer sequence control is the key strategy used by nature for developing molecularly encoded self-replicators, which are the essence of all of Earth’s known life forms. However, current synthetic polymers are often polydisperse and sequence-uncontrolled in nature, which greatly hinder understanding of fundamental interactions between synthetic polymers and biological systems. In recent years, various synthesis strategies have been developed to fabricate precision synthetic polymers. For example, solid-phase chemistry allows preparation of sequence-defined polymers. Such strategy is quite efficient for controlling dispersity and monomer sequences of synthetic polymers, but it is greatly limited by low yields, high cost of the solid supports, inability to quantitatively monitor the coupling progress and difficulties of scale up. In striking contrast, liquid-phase synthesis has long been proposed to overcome these deficiencies, enabling facile and efficient production of precision synthetic polymers at large scales. Herein, we create a flexible and scalable platform towards manufacturing various precision biopolymers (i.e. polyether’s, polyesters, etc.) with readily controlled side-chain sequences. In this strategy, a discrete polymer backbone with defined monomer sequences will be readily fabricated using liquid-phase iterative synthesis with size-exclusion molecular-sieving followed by site-selective conjugation of versatile functional theranostic agents to the polymer backbone in a specific order, to produce multifunctional precision biopolymers. The resulting multifunctional precision biopolymers have great potential as a promising theranostic vehicle for widespread applications in biomedical and pharmaceutical fields.