Construction of non-linear chemical information transaction system using allosteric interaction

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The positive homotropic allosterism appears in important information transduction processes where chemical and physical signals are efficiently amplified. The phenomena are ubiquitously seen in nature but the general methodology to design such allosteric systems is not yet established in an artificial system. This article reviews such artificial receptors that can bind guest ions and molecules in a positive allosteric manner and discusses what kinds of factors are indispensable as scaffolds to design this novel class of allosteric systems and what are the common factors to realize the cooperativity. It has been shown that the scaffolds are mostly dynamic and are skillfully combined with the molecular recognition systems so that the subsequent guest binding can occur more favorably than the first guest binding. In addition, it has been suggested that the positive homotropic allosterism can be utilized as a new strategy to attain high guest selectivity and guest affinity which cannot be attained by conventional 1 : 1-type guest binding.