Tailored charge-neutral self-assembled L₂Zn₂ container for taming oxalate

• David Ocklenburg and
• David Van Craen

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 3007–3015, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.250

• can easily replace ligand strands leading to a partial or full receptor decomposition. Herein, we present a charge-neutral zinc(II)-based metallocontainer which was tuned to contest oxalate as most competitive dicarboxylate. The dianion is bound in a 1:1 fashion with a binding constant of log K = 4.39

• ; metallocontainer; oxalate; Introduction Dicarboxylic acids and their corresponding anions are essential intermediates in the biosynthesis of proteins and important biological metabolites [1][2]. As a result, the development of receptors for this class of compounds is of high interest [3][4][5]. Oxalate, the

• catalysis [80]. Inspired by these reports, our goal was to overcome the competitive nature of oxalate by encapsulating it in a charge-neutral metallocontainer for the first time. We revisited our previous receptor design and it was clear that the zinc–zinc distance needs to match the size of oxalate in