DESIGN, SYNTHESIS, AND EVALUATION OF BILE ACID-BASED MOLECULAR TWEEZERS

A family of bile acid-based molecular tweezers (7-9) has been construc ted readily from simple precursors. Binding experiments with various e lectron deficient aromatic compounds showed that tweezer 8 binds trini trofluorenone 10e with an association constant of 220 M(-1) in CDCl3. Single-crystal X-ray analysis of compound 8 shows aromatic-aromatic in teractions producing a two-dimensional lattice of pyrene units. Tweeze r 8 was immobilized on Merrifield resin, and binding studies have show n that these data compare well with those of the solution state studie s.