Foldermeric Cage Catalysis

This PhD project will examine bio-inspired catalysis of novel non-covalent systems. It will build on previous research conducted in the Lusby group, which has focus on the use self-assembled coordination cages as enzyme mimics.
In this particular project, we will follow several new lines of enquiry, looking both at new designs and also uncovering new catalysed process. Moreover, we will aim to shift away from conventional self-assembled cages, which use a metal ion to bring together multiple ligands forming a central cavity in which catalysis takes place. Instead, we will explore completely novel systems, namely synthetic foldermeric cages. These artificial systems not only mimic the function of enzymes, they also replicate how Nature uses protein folding of long peptidic chains to generate the necessary tertiary structure that provides an enzyme active site. In this project, we will use coordination-driven folding with long abiotic ligands to generate these new types of systems. This approach will overcome one of the key limitations in coordination self-assembly: generating low symmetry structures from multiple ligands. Using conventional self-assembly, this leads to complex statistical mixture driven by the maximisation of global entropy. Being able to selectively prepare low symmetry structures (akin the enzymes) will lead to more finely-tuned catalysts that will be able to provide both better activity and selectivity. It is eventually envisaged that such catalytic properties may also be used in bio-medical applications.