9 - Synthesis and applications of backbone-fluorinated amino acids

Abstract

Fluorinated amino acids have many important applications in peptide and protein science. An interesting, and relatively unexplored, subset are the backbone-fluorinated amino acids. Such building blocks display unique electronic characteristics and they have predictable conformational behavior, so they offer a wealth of possibilities in biological and supramolecular chemistry. This chapter will discuss the various strategies that have been explored for the synthesis of backbone-fluorinated α-, β-, γ-, and δ-amino acids. A survey will then be presented of some of the applications in which these unique molecules have been exploited.