Chiral analysis of macromolecules

Chiral chromatography and surface chirality of carbon nanoparticles

Chiral carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) represent a rapidly evolving area of research for optical and biomedical technologies. Similar to small molecules, applications of CNPs as well as fundamental relationships between their optical activity and structural asymmetry would greatly benefit from their enantioselective separations by chromatography. However, this technique remains in its infancy for chiral carbon and other nanoparticles. The possibility of effective separations using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with chiral stationary phases remains an open question whose answer can also shed light on the components of multiscale chirality of the nanoparticles. Herein, we report a detailed methodology of HPLC for successful separation of chiral CNPs and establish a path for its future optimization. A mobile phase of water/acetonitrile was able to achieve chiral separation of CNPs derived from L- and D-cysteine denoted as L-CNPs and D-CNPs. Molecular dynamics simulations show that the teicoplanin-based stationary phase has a higher affinity for L-CNPs than for D-CNPs, in agreement with experiments. The experimental and computational findings jointly indicate that chiral centers of chiral CNPs are present at their surface, which is essential for the multiple applications of these chiral nanostructures and equally essential for interactions with biomolecules and circularly polarized photons.

The Target Determination and the Mechanism of Action of Chiral-Antimalarial Drugs: A Docking Approach

Due to an undecided target and the prescription of chiral-aminoquinolines (chloroquine, primaquine and quinacrine) in the racemic form, the mechanism of action as well as the reason of causing side effects become unclear. Based on computationally evaluated literature data, the things determined theoretically were (i) the target of aminoquinolines during antimalarial activity, (ii) the mechanism of action of chiral-aminoquinolines and (iii) biologically active enantiomers of aminoquinolines. For the presented study, the enantiomeric binding affinities of aminoquinolines with all the targets claimed by other scientists were calculated, and then used in interpretation with the help of many investigations done/observed by others. The results were very interesting based on which, a new and acceptable mechanism of action of chiral-aminoquinolines during malaria curing step, is given for the first time. The current docking study not only resolves the questionable point about a definite target of aminoquinolines but also makes the mechanism of action understandable.