Local Chiral Inversion of Thymine Dimers by Manipulating Single Water Molecules.

Lei Xie, Yuanqi Ding, Donglin Li, Chi Zhang, Yangfan Wu, Luye Sun, Mengxi Liu, Xiaohui Qiu, Wei Xu

Journal of the American Chemical Society 2022 Mar 23

filter terms:

Water, as one of the most important and indispensable small molecules in vivo, plays a crucial role in driving biological self-assembly processes. Real-space detection and identification of water-induced organic structures and further capture of dynamic dehydration processes are important yet challenging, which would help to reveal the cooperation and competition mechanisms among water-involved noncovalent interactions. Herein, introduction of water molecules onto the self-assembled thymine (T) structures under ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) conditions results in the hydration of hydrogen-bonded T dimers forming a well-ordered water-involved T structure. Reversibly, a local dehydration process is achieved by in situ scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) manipulation on single water molecules, where the adjacent T dimers connected with water molecules undergo a local chiral inversion process with the hydrogen-bonding configuration preserved. Such a strategy enables real-space identification and detection of the interactions between water and organic molecules, which may also shed light on the understanding of biologically relevant self-assembly processes driven by water.

Citation

Lei Xie, Yuanqi Ding, Donglin Li, Chi Zhang, Yangfan Wu, Luye Sun, Mengxi Liu, Xiaohui Qiu, Wei Xu. Local Chiral Inversion of Thymine Dimers by Manipulating Single Water Molecules. Journal of the American Chemical Society. 2022 Mar 23;144(11):5023-5028