Ben Barber

1 Introduction Nature uses supramolecular chemistry to achieve almost every complex task in our bodies; from the base pairing and π-stacking enabling information storage in the DNA double helix to the structure-dictating hydrophobic core common to many proteins, supramolecular chemistry is essential to life.[1-4] The noncovalent interactions that supramolecular systems are built from are also central to many concepts in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology and the mode of action of...

Highlights • Peptides can provide the requisite coordination vectors to form metal-peptidic cages • Tunable length of oligoprolines enables design and synthesis of cages of varying sizes • We move the field from roughly spherical to precisely patterned, anisotropic nanospaces • Using complex, chiral, and helical ligands strongly favors emergent structural control The bigger picture Metal-organic cages are precisely defined nanoscale assemblies that can bind and transform substrates in ways...

Abstract The self-assembly of metal-organic cages enables the rapid creation of atomically defined, three-dimensional, nanoscale architectures reminiscent of proteins. However, existing metal-organic cages are almost exclusively built from rigid and flat aromatic panels, limiting binding selectivity and, often, water solubility.