Stereodivergent synthesis with a programmable molecular machine

It has been convincingly argued^{1, 2, 3} that molecular machines that manipulate individual atoms, or highly reactive clusters of atoms, with Ångström precision are unlikely to be realized. However, biological molecular machines routinely position rather less reactive substrates in order to direct chemical reaction sequences, from sequence-specific synthesis by the ribosome⁴ to polyketide synthases^{5, 6, 7}, where tethered molecules are passed from active site to active site in multi-enzyme complexes. Artificial molecular machines^{8, 9, 10, 11, 12} have been developed for tasks that include sequence-specific oligomer synthesis^{13, 14, 15} and the switching of product chirality^{16, 17, 18,}

Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature23677

DOI: 10.1038/nature23677