Stephanie Koenig
N-H Protected Dendritic Tryptophan

Project Overview

Stephanie (Erasmus Student – Strasbourg) continued our studies of dendritic tryptophan derivatives as biological mimics. Her studies, which involved a mixture of organic synthesis and fluorescence measurements, proved unambiguously that the dendritic shell controls the fluorescence of tryptophan through the formation of a hydrogen bond interaction. This presumably mimics the way in which hydrogen bond interaction can control the fluorescence of tryptophan inside proteins. Tryptophan fluorescence is of great importance in molecular biology because it is used as a diagnostic marker of the environment of the tryptophan group. However, the importance of hydrogen bond interactions on this fluorescence had not previously been clearly elucidated. This indicates the ability of dendrimers to act as biomimics and provide new useful information about biological systems. Her research was published in a regularly cited Chem. Eur. J. paper and Stephanie went on to carry out a PhD in the group of Victor Chechik.