Building precise spatial confinement has emerged as a transformative strategy for controlling chemical reactivity and selectivity, offering new opportunities in organic synthesis. Nature provides striking examples of confinement-driven reactivity and selectivity. One notable example is terpene cyclizations. Within the hydrophobic pocket of terpene cyclases, the folding of the otherwise conformationally flexible polyprenyl precursors determines the outcome of the cyclization phase in polyene biosynthesis, thus granting access to a plethora of different carbon skeletons from identical substrates and reaction types through shape-selective transformations. Achieving such predictable control over molecular conformation in solution remains a long-standing challenge in organic chemistry, motivating the development of confinement-based strategies for polyene cyclizations and beyond.
This talk will highlight our group’s recent advances in engineering and harnessing confined spaces to unlock new synthetic tools - from accelerating enzymatic processes1 to the synthesis of natural products2 and employing these principles in non-natural processes, such as photocatalysis3 and hydrogen-deuterium exchange.
Contact
Institut für Biochemie
Felix-Hausdorff-Straße 4, 17489 Greifswald
Telefon +49 3834 420 4367
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