Hierarchical Self-Assembly of Poly-Pseudorotaxanes into Artificial Microtubules

Abstract

Hierarchical self-assembly of building blocks over multiple length scales is ubiquitous in living organisms. Microtubules are one of the principal cellular components formed by hierarchical self-assembly of nanometer-sized tubulin heterodimers into protofilaments, which then associate to form micron-length-scale, multi-stranded tubes. This peculiar biological process is now mimicked with a fully synthetic molecule, which forms a 1:1 host-guest complex with cucurbit[7]uril as a globular building block, and then polymerizes into linear poly-pseudorotaxanes that associate laterally with each other in a self-shape-complementary manner to form a tubular structure with a length over tens of micrometers. Molecular dynamic simulations suggest that the tubular assembly consists of eight poly-pseudorotaxanes that wind together to form a 4.5 nm wide multi-stranded tubule.