Synthesis of Linear Oligomers of (R)-3-Hydroxybutyrate and Solid-State Structural Investigations by Electron Microscopy and X-ray Scattering

Repetitive treatment of the biopolymer P(3-HB) (molecular weight > 105 Dalton, storage or s-P(3-HB)), with lithium hexamethyl disilazanid (LHMDS) at −70° in THF leads to a mixture of oligomers with increasingly sharp distribution around a 15-, 30-, and 45mer. Discrete fragments are also isolated when P(3-HB) is heated under reflux (89°) in neat Et3N. Linear oligo(3-HB) derivatives (3-7) containing up to 96 3-HB units are synthesized using an exponential segment-coupling strategy. These oligomers are used to calibrate size-exclusion chromatography columns for the analysis of oligo(3-HB) samples from the different sources. The linear oligo-(3-HB) derivatives also served as a model with respect to the physical properties of high molecular weight P(3-HB) and were investigated as such by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and by small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS and WAXS). The thicknesses of the lamellar crystallites (long periods) formed by the 8mer, 16mer, and 32mer, are ca. 26, 52, and 53 A, respectively, indicating that the 32mer molecules are folded once, very tightly, into a ‘hair-pin’-type conformation. High-molecular-weight P(3-HB), which was crystallized in a similar way, also has a lamellar crystallite thickness of ca. 50–65 A. Thus, the treatment of P(3-HB) with LHMDS at low temperature causes etching of the amorphous regions, an effect well known in polymer science for studying the regularity of chain folding. The ca. 50-A packing within the tight folds of P(3-HB) is discussed in view of its possible function in ion transport through cell membranes.

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