Poly(S-ethylsulfonyl-l-homocysteine): An α-Helical Polypeptide for Chemoselective Disulfide Formation

Homocysteine and cysteine are the only natural occurring amino acids that are capable of disulfide bond formations in peptides and proteins. The chemoselective formation of asymmetric disulfide bonds, however, is chemically challenging and requires an activating group combining stability against hard nucleophiles, e.g., amines, with reactivity toward thiols and soft nucleophiles. In light of these considerations, we introduced the S-alkylsulfonyl cysteines in our previous work. Here, we present the synthesis and ring-opening polymerization of S-ethylsulfonyl-l-homocysteine N-carboxyanhydrides. We demonstrate that the polymerization leads to narrowly distributed polypeptides (Đ = 1.1–1.3) with no detectable side reactions in a chain length regime from 11 to 165. In contrast to the already reported cysteine derivatives, poly(S-ethylsulfonyl-l-homocysteine)s do not form β-sheets, which reduce solubility and limit the degree of polymerization of poly(S-ethylsulfonyl-l-cysteine)s to 50. Instead, these polymers...