Ringing in 23 building blocks

Self-Assembly Bottom-up synthesis of specific oligomers often relies on steadily increasing symmetry. Pairwise interactions between building blocks repeat themselves throughout the structure. Pappas et al. report a case of self-assembly that breaks this paradigm. As many as 23 monomers selectively combined to form low-symmetry macrocycles stabilized by a self-coiled geometry. The building blocks consist of dimercaptobenzene units that can reversibly link up through disulfide bonds, each bearing a dipeptide tail that guides the assembly process through hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions. Nat. Chem. 12 , 1180 (2020).