A Membrane Based Platform for the Synthesis of Defined Sequence Polymers

Natural processes are able to produce polymers of exact sequence and length, such as DNA and peptides, however to date no one has been able to create synthetic polymers of a predefined sequence at a level of accuracy and efficiency close to these natural polymers. All current research focuses upon solid phase iterative synthesis, adding one monomer at a time upon a solid support. This yields significant loss of useful monomers, a rate of production that is highly diffusion limited, and prohibitive production cost. My PhD research, completed under the tutelage of Professor Andrew Livingston, will tackle these issues by combining the iterative synthesis approach with membranes recently developed, by the research group, for organic solvent nanofiltration. This will allow for the creation of sequence specific exact length synthetic polymers (or exactymers) in liquid phase reactions, rather than the solid phase described above. This will result in a new production platform for exactymer synthesis, promoting higher yields, higher purity and easier scale up then the current convention.
The definite nature of this production method, coupled with the ability to functionalise each monomer uniquely, enables exactymers to have precise chemical groups at known locations. The resulting molecules can then be used for a multitude of applications depending on the functionalisation used for each individual monomer. Many of these applications only become accessible due to the high quality and quantity of the new production platform, for example in healthcare, the functionalisation can produce a molecule containing a specific combination of active pharmaceutical ingredient, imaging agent and binding ligand to create a highly targeted drug. This has the potential to revolutionise the pharmaceutical industry, reducing side effects and saving countless lives. In nanotechnology, the exactymers can be functionalised with conformation directing side chains to ensure a specific 3D shape of complex macromolecular structures. Further potential applications include information storage, where the sequence of functionalised side chains can be used for high security data storage with each side chain corresponding to a predefined figure or data packet, mimicking the function of DNA in the human body and changing the landscape of data encryption.