Revealing chiral self-sorting mechanisms

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K22196
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 34:Inorganic/coordination chemistry, analytical chemistry, and related fields
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Hiraoka Shuichi 東京大学, 大学院総合文化研究科, 教授 (10322538)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-06-28 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 超分子化学 / 分子自己集合 / 自己集合過程 / キラルセルフソーティング

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Chiral self-sorting is the phenomenon where chiral building blocks are sorted in molecular self-assembly, which is the ordering process recognizing one side of enantiomers and the other. Although many examples of chiral self-soring have been reported in artificial self-assembly systems so far, investigation of their sorting mechanisms is scarce. In this research, we focus on chiral self-sorting system in coordination self-assembly composed of chiral multitopic ligands and Pd(II) ions and revealed the self-assembly process and chiral self-sorting process by experiments to find (1) which step chiral self-soring mainly takes place in and (2) what is the deterministic factor of the major soring step.

Free Research Field

分子自己集合、超分子化学、錯体化学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

生命は片側の鏡像体のみからなるキラルな世界でその営みを維持しており、キラル認識なしに、生命の緻密な機能の発現はあり得ない。自然界におけるホモキラルな物質の起源（選択過程）にキラルセルフソーティングが直結するわけではないが、鏡像体が集団でそれぞれを複雑に識別する機構を理解することで、キラリティーの起源の解明や生命に似たホモキラルな分子システムの開発にも役立つ。