Molecular Design of Artificial Saccharide Receptors

For the development of new receptor molecules that can precisely recognize sugar molecules, we synthesized a number of diboronic acids. Since one boronic acid can react with two OH groups (one diol tot group) to form a boronate ester, one diboronic acid can immobilize two diol units to form a sugar-containing macrocycle. The selectivity can be tuned by the relative spatial position of the two boronic acids and the complexation event can be read out by circular dichroism, UV-Vis, and fluorescence spectroscopy. The nature presents a variety of saccharide structures to us which are already utilized as a "recognition tag" or a "supramolecular building-blocks" in the life processes. If we gain some efficient interfaces to control chemical and physical properties of saccharides, it will become possible to mimic this chemistry in artifical systems. As a research target to challenge this new concept, we can now raise three examples which are currently studied in our laboratory.