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Laurence Charles de l’équipe SACS, en collaboration avec le groupe du Dr. Jean‐François Lutz de l’Institut Charles Sadron, a étudié la dégradation et la réparation de poly(uréthane)s N-substitués à séquence contrôlée. Leurs travaux ouvrent de nouvelles voies intéressantes pour l‘édition, l’altération et la correction de séquences digitales

Damage and Repair in Informational Poly(N-substituted urethane)s

Tathagata Mondal, Laurence Charles, Jean-Francois Lutz,
Angewandte Chemie-International Edition, 59 20390-20393 (2020)

The degradation and repair of uniform sequence-defined poly(N-substituted urethane)s was studied. Polymers containing an omega-OH end-group and only ethyl carbamate main-chain repeat units rapidly degrade in NaOH solution through an omega ->alpha depolymerization mechanism with no apparent sign of random chain cleavage. The degradation mechanism is not notably affected by the nature of the side-chain N-substituents and took place for all studied sequences. On the other hand, depolymerization is significantly influenced by the molecular structure of the main-chain repeat units. For instance, hexyl carbamate main-chain motifs block unzipping and can therefore be used to control the degradation of specific sequence sections. Interestingly, the partially degraded polymers can also be repaired; for example by using a combination ofN,N '-disuccinimidyl carbonate with a secondary amine building-block. Overall, these findings open up interesting new avenues for chain-healing and sequence editing.

Collaborations : Group of Jean-François Lutz (Institut Charles Sadron) https://www.ics-cnrs.unistra.fr/equipe-cmp.html