Tetrazole Diversification of Amino Acids and Peptides via Silver-Catalyzed Intermolecular Cycloaddition with Aryldiazonium Salts

Hydrogen Bonding-Induced Aggregation of Chiral Functionalized AuNS@Ag NPs for Photothermal Enantioanalysis

Toward the challenges of signaling transduction amplified in enantioselective recognition, we herein devised an innovative strategy for highly selective recognition of amino acids and their derivatives, leveraging photothermal effects. In this approach, bifunctional l-ascorbic acid is employed to reduce silver ions in situ on Au nanostars. Simultaneously, its oxidate (l-dehydroascorbic acid) is bonded to the silver shell as a chiral selector to prepare chiral nanoparticles (C-AuNS@Ag NPs) with the ability to recognize stereoisomers and sensitively modulate the photothermal effect. l-Dehydroascorbic acid can selectively capture one of the enantiomers of the two forms through hydrogen bonding and drive aggregation of the nanoparticles, which sharply enhances the photothermal effect. Consequently, the two forms of the system exhibit a significant temperature difference, which enables the discrimination and quantification of enantiomers. Our strategy verifies that six chiral amino acids and their derivatives can be discriminated with enantioselective response values of up to 79. Additionally, the chiral recognition mechanism was revealed through density functional theory (DFT) calculations, providing a paradigm shift in the development of enantiomeric recognition strategies.

Pinpointing Acidic Residues in Proteins

It is of great importance to pinpoint specific residues or sites of a protein in biological contexts to enable desired mechanism of action for small molecules or to precisely control protein function. In this regard, acidic residues including aspartic acid (Asp) and glutamic acid (Glu) hold great potential due to their great prevalence and unique function. To unlock the largely untapped potential, great efforts have been made recently by synthetic chemists, chemical biologists and pharmacologists. Herein, we would like to highlight the remarkable progress and particularly introduce the electrophiles that exhibit reactivity to carboxylic acids, the light-induced reactivities to carboxylic acids and the genetically encoded noncanonical amino acids that allow protein manipulations at acidic residues. We also comment on certain unresolved challenges, hoping to draw more attention to this rapidly developing area.