SYNTHESIS OF POLYMERS AS MIMICS FOR BIOLOGICAL MEMBRANES AND CHIRAL MOLECULES

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The general research plan of our effort is to develop polymeric materials that mimic biological systems. We are currently concentrating on the development of polymers which function on the basis of noncovalent interactions and/or electron transfer processes. The first objective of the work will be to develop and economically feasible methodology for preparing optically active vinyl polymers or helix sense selective polymerization. Computational and experimental techniques will be used in a complementary fashion to develop this methodology. By studying monomer structure-tendency to isotactic polymerization and conformational stabilities of the resulting isotactic polymers, we expect to develop this methodology. Inexpensive optically active polymers will be useful in molecular biology, synthetic enzymes and regenerable asymmetric reagents. Secondly, we intent to further develop the MIEC block copolymers as the active component in biosensors to detect and quantify enantiomers of amino acids through noncovalent interactions. We will, also, evaluate and develop the MIEC block copolymers for biological electron transfer membranes. It is expected this work will result in the preparation of synthetic membranes for therapeutic purposes.