Abstract

The development of artificial catalysts is an exciting, emerging new area of chemical science and technology. Knowledge of enzyme structure and function is being used to help develop catalytically active molecularly imprinted polymers. By using coenzymes in imprinted polymers it is possible to mimic the catalytic activity of enzyme active sites. Coenzymes as imprinting templates create binding sites within a polymer, and these sites can be designed to have enzyme-mimetic catalytic activity. This work describes the creation of imprinted polymers with recognition sites for flavins and thiamines. In Chapter IV, a Riboflavin derivative (3) was non-covalently imprinted as a model to study the effect of varying the imprinting and template removal conditions. The template 3 was shown to be redox active, although whether the redox changes took place in the recognition site was inconclusive. In Chapter V, a two-point binding non-covalent molecularly imprinted polymer for 2 was made. Testing the recognition of various coenzymes and coenzyme analogs (2-6) has explored and defined the binding characteristics of the coenzyme-imprinted polymer. Thiamine and several analogs were studied for their potential as templates for an imprinted polymer for the recognition of thiamine in Chapter VI. The imprinting system has potential to be developed further in order to realize catalytically active systems. This dissertation includes my previously published material.