Designer hybrid cyclopeptides for membrane ion transport and tubular structures.

The incorporation of chosen, non-amino acids into cyclopeptides is a promising approach to designs capable of performing specific tasks. While such hybrid cyclopeptides are common in the microbial world, there is hardly any effort by synthetic organic chemists to explore such designs for creating architecturally beautiful and functionally useful macrocyclic hybrid peptides. This Account, mainly reviewing the author's own work, presents a simple design strategy enabling the crafting of a large variety of hybrid cyclopeptides and leading to the identification of excellent membrane ion carriers, units that self-assemble into tubular structures, and systems for specific guest recognition.