An attempt to consider cooperativity in helical-sense preferences induced in fused macrocycles.

We synthesized bis and tris(macrocycle)s in which a two- or three-fold macrocycle was fused and each adopted twisted forms with M - or P -helicity. According to the sense of twisting in each element, diverse conformations can be generated in a molecule. We present two types of conformational preferences. One is the innate preference for a helical form with an identical sense of twisting throughout the entire molecule. The other is the helical-sense preference for a particular sense of twisting. We were interested in the relationship between K n and ( K 1 ) n , where K n is an equilibrium constant for the conformational interconversion between two helical forms ( MM and PP , MMM and PPP ) and n is the number of elements, since we considered that the relationship could be a metric to see the interinfluence among these macrocyclic elements in a single molecule. Through VT measurements in 1 H NMR and CD spectroscopy, we attempted to quantify the helical-sense preferences induced in the fused macrocycles ( n = 2 and 3) to compare K n and ( K 1 ) n .