Developing Roles for Phosphates Outside of Biology: A Systems Chemistry Approach Towards Abiotic Phosphate Fuels

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Phosphates and phosphate esters underpin biological information transfer, signal transduction, and contribute to the energetics of life. Biochemical fuels that include phosphates (ATP, GTP) drive selective processes, by incorporating chemical information (A vs. G) in their fuel structure. Despite the multifaceted role of phosphates in biology, their use in supramolecular systems chemistry remains largely underexplored. PhosphotoSupraChem develops roles for phosphates outside of biology and capitalizes on the idea of providing chemical information within abiotic phosphate fuels to control selectivity and reactivity in the context of fuel-driven structure formation. The information is provided by chemical functionalization of energy-rich phosphate fuels, whereby the information encode structural assembly of fuels prior to their consumption, or transfer large chemical groups onto self-assembling species during energy transfer. Specific aims are: (i) Understand the chemical design space for phosphate fuel self-assembly and how such structures control selectivity and reactivity when transferring the energy for the formation of transient assemblies; (ii) Construct fuels, capable of transferring structural information, enabling folding and chimeric dissipative self-assembly; (iii) Promote waste-driven fuel formation, substrate release and peptide bond formation (v) Involve fuels in automated synthesis for microfluidics materials discovery PhosphotoSupraChem pioneers an unexplored area of science at the roots of dissipative systems and phosphate-driven systems chemistry. This strategy profoundly contrasts the present non-equilibrium self-assembly research featuring fuelling with molecules that lack structural and recognition elements. In the long term, fabricating biocompatible dissipative systems and developing automated platforms that guide fuels to specific functions will be a decisive step toward creating dynamic assemblies in vivo and programming active soft matter.