Nucleobase-templated Polymerization: Copying The Chain Length And Polydispersity Of Living Polymers Into Conjugated Polymers

摘要

Nucleic acid templated polymerization is a fundamental biological process that enables the precise copying of the sequence and length of a DNA or RNA strand into a daughter polymer. Over the past few years, nonenzymatic nucleobase-templated polymerization has been examined, notably to construct DNA analogues and peptide nucleic acids that reproduce the information of their templates. A particularly attractive goal would be to use nucleobase-templated polymerization to address problems in synthetic polymer chemistry. For instance, polymers synthesized by step polymerization mechanisms, and in particular conjugated polymers, suffer from poor molecular weight control and broad molecular weight distributions. By using a polymer generated by living methods as the template strand, nucleobase-templated polymerization can possibly result in copying the controlled molecular weight and narrow polydispersity of this parent strand into a daughter conjugated polymer. However, to our knowledge, this approach, which would significantly enhance the properties of conjugated polymers, has not been previously reported.