“Gear-Driven”-Type Chirality Transfer of Tetraphenylethene-Based Supramolecular Organic Frameworks for Peptides in Water

Chirality transfer for natural chiral biomolecules can reveal the indispensable role of chiral structures in life and can be used to develop the chirality-sensing biomolecular recognition. Here, we report the synthesis and characterization of a series of achiral supramolecular organic frameworks (SOF-1, SOF-2, and SOF-3), constructed from cucurbit[8]uril (CB[8]) and tetraphenylethene (TPE) derivatives (1, 2, and 3), respectively, as chirality-sensing platforms to explore their chirality transfer mechanism for peptides in water. Given the right-handed (P) and left-handed (M) rotational conformation of TPE units and the selective binding of CB[8] to aromatic amino acids, these achiral SOFs can be selectively triggered in water by peptides containing N-terminal tryptophan (W) and phenylalanine (F) residues into their P- or M-rotational conformation, exhibiting significantly different circular dichroism (CD) spectra. Although various peptides have the same L-type chiral configuration, they can induce positive CD signals of SOF-1 and negative CD signals of SOF-2 and SOF-3, respectively. Based on the structural analysis of the linkage units between CB[8] and TPE units in these SOFs, a “gear-driven”-type chirality transfer mechanism has been proposed to visually illustrate the multiple-step chirality transfer process from the recognition site in the CB[8]’s cavity to TPE units. Furthermore, by utilizing the characteristic CD signals generated through the “gear-driven”-type chirality transfer, a series of SOFs can serve as chiroptical sensor arrays to effectively recognize and distinguish various peptides based on their distinctive CD spectra.