Abstract
The work described herein is devoted to the synthesis and the structural characterization of a new family of heterocyclic constrained γ-amino acids, named ATCs (4-Amino-(methyl)-1,3-Thiazole-5-Carboxylic acids). These building-blocks are built around a thiazole ring inserted between the Cα-Cβ carbons allowing the limitation of the ζ dihedral angle value to 0°. The presence of two diversification points both on the γ asymmetric carbon and on the position 2 of the aromatic ring, allows a large structural diversification of the ATCs. Series of oligomers consisting in dimers, tetramers and hexamers soluble in halogenated solvents, alcools and water have been synthesized according to peptide chemistry. The conformations of the sequences have been studied by various NMR experiments associated to modelling studies led under NMR constraints. The ATC oligomers adopt a right 39 helical shape, owning a pitch of 11.8 Å which has been confirmed by crystallography. The helix is stabilized by a conserved hydrogen bond pattern between CO(i)…NH(i+2) occurring all along the sequence axis. Circular dichroism measures have been done to check the conformational stability of the architectures. In the second part of the manuscript, we demonstrate by NMR and theoretical computing that when included in a short peptide sequence, ATCs could act as turns. The derived application consists in optimizing the biological behaviour of the ATC moiety as a turn mimetic thanks to the design and the antibacterial evaluation of a gramicidin S analogue. Based on our knowledge about the three-dimensional structure of ATC oligomers, the last part of this work deals with our efforts to develop inhibitors of protein-protein interaction STAT6-NCoA-1.