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Unnatural Information-containing Macromolecules
Information-containing macromolecules are polymers that contain a message encrypted in their comonomer sequences. The archetypal example of such a polymer is DNA, which is used in biology to store genetic information. However, DNA is certainly not the only polymer that can contain molecular information. In principle, a string of information can be created in any copolymer using two comonomers defined intentionally as 0-bit and 1-bit. However, such polymers have to be monodisperse and perfectly sequence-defined. In addition, the message encoded in their chains should be easily read. In this lecture, I will present recent achievements obtained in my laboratory for the synthesis of information-containing macromolecules. Recent progress in the field of sequence-controlled polymers allows synthesis of unnatural macromolecules with precisely controlled primary and secondary structures. For instance, monodisperse sequence-defined polymers were prepared using chemoselective iterative strategies. Furthermore, the readability of these polymers will be presented. For instance the sequencing of unnatural sequence-defined copolymers by tandem mass spectrometry will be discussed.