Organic Letters 1999-12-02

Non-hydrogen-bonded secondary structure in beta-peptides: evidence from circular dichroism of (S)-pyrrolidine-3-carboxylic acid oligomers and (S)-nipecotic acid oligomers.

B R Huck, J M Langenhan, S H Gellman

Index: Org. Lett. 1(11) , 1717-20, (1999)

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Abstract

[formula: see text] Homooligomers of beta-amino acids (S)-3-pyrrolidine-3-carboxylic acid (PCA) and (S)-nipecotic acid (Nip) were studied by circular dichroism (CD) in methanol. In each series, a profound change in the far-UV CD spectrum was observed from monomer to tetramer, but little change was observed from tetramer to hexamer. A comparable pattern is observed in the CD spectra of short proline oligomers. We conclude that both PCA and Nip oligomers with > or = four residues adopt a characteristic secondary structure.