Substrate+assisted+moulding

Substrate Assisted Molding

Similar to receptor assisted casting, substrate assisted molding is a form of thermodynamic templating. However, unlike casting, which probes the active site of a “host” biomolecule through the dynamic combination of DCL constituents that interact most favourably with its active site, in the molding method, target molecule acts as a mold for the DCL. As a result, the library member acts as a “host” rather than as a "guest"in substrate assisted molding [2]. The member that acts as a host is amplified in a manner similar to any DCC system; that is, the most favourable interactions between the target molecule and library constituents are maximized which shifts the system equilibrium, amplifying the production of the thermodynamically most favourable library member [1].

Figure 1 [2] : Substrate assisted molding in dynamic combinatorial libraries. The building blocks are present on the left, the various library members that are formed from these building blocks are represented in the middle and the right side of the figure indicates the amplified library member (bigger brown molecule) along with the target molecule (green) that acts as a "guest". The hooks represents the reversible bonds between the building blocks. In both, the receptor assisted casting as well as the substrate assisted molding, the basic principles are the same: the library member that interacts best with the target molecule is amplified, in order to achieve the thermodynamic minima. With the help of substrate assisted molding, different information about a biomolecule, such as the idiotype of an antibody, rather than the active site of an enzyme can be determined as the target molecule acts as the guest, rather than as the host [2].

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