Acridine groups used in molecular tweezers

Abstract

In a contribution to the broad field of molecular recognition, chemists at the University of Illinois, Urbana, have been working on construction of molecular tweezers. Describing these compounds at an organic chemistry session, they noted that the compounds feature planar complexing groups held syn-cofacial (face-to-face with matching of corresponding functional groups) by rigid spacers. Such molecules might be useful in studying intercalation (sandwiching) of such flat species as bases of deoxyribonucleic acids for studies in sequence recognition, carcinogenesis, and chemotherapy. Organic chemistry professor Steven C. Zimmerman told his audience that the term molecular tweezers was coined 10 years ago by organic chemistry professor Howard Whitlock at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. But Zimmerman's compounds show very efficient complexing owing to the recognition that the cavity between the tweezer jaws must be preorganized. The principle of preorganization of host molecules to accommodate guests ar...