Synthetic ligands in bioorganic chemistry: guanidinium-mediated ion transport and gene delivery and development of a b-sheet propensity scale

The work reported in this Ph. D. thesis concerns the synthesis and properties of ligands designed for bioorganic applications. In particular, i) new non-viral vectors for gene delivery and ion transporters based on calix[n]arene functionalized with guanidinium groups or arginine units, and ii) an experimental b-sheet propensity scale for a-amino acid residues, via Backbone Thioester Exchange (BTE) have been developed.