Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Smart Polymers are information-containing molecules. The natural nucleic acids, RNA and DNA, which have the ability of specifically recognizing a complementary strand and thus forming a duplex, may be considered as "smart polymers". Oligopeptides and proteins are naturally occuring "smart polymer" that has inspired the synthesis of polyamides that incorporate unnatural reporter groups for biosensor development. Simiarly, artificial or synthetic polymers can be designed and synthesized to have similar information content based on readout of a particular sequence or structure. Some of these synthetic smart polymers are closely related to nucleic acids and other are more divergent. Nonetheless, the way in which smart polymers interact to form structures requires investigation - and one of the most powerful techniques is by measuring the circular dichroic spectrum using an instrument known as a CD spectrophotometer.As well, the interaction of smart polymers (duplexes and other helices) with smaller molecules is a fundamental interaction in biology. For example, drugs that interact with DNA and thus form the basis of some modern chemotherapeutic approaches, may be investigated by CD spectrophotometry - and this is the area of research being pursued too. Further, conformational changes of oligopeptides for instance driven by interaction with a desired target may serve as the basis for biosensor development.