Yongju Kim

Toroidal nanostructures are symmetrical ring-shaped structures with a central internal pore. Interestingly, in nature, many transmembrane proteins such as β-barrels and α-helical bundles have toroidal shapes. Because of this similarity, toroidal nanostructures can provide a template for the development of transmembrane channels. However, because of the lack of guiding principles for the construction of toroids, researchers have not widely studied the self-assembly of toroidal nanostructures as c

Chiral materials are widely applied in various fields such as enantiomeric separation, asymmetric catalysis, and chiroptical effects, providing stereospecific conditions and environments. Supramolecular concepts to create the chiral materials can provide an insight for emerging chiro-optical properties due to their well-defined scaffolds and the precise functionalization of the surfaces or skeletons. Among the various supramolecular chiral structures, 2D chiral sheet structures are particularly

Data-driven approaches enable a deep understanding of microstructure and mechanical properties of materials and greatly promote one's capability in designing new advanced materials. Deep learning-based image processing outperforms conventional image processing techniques with unsupervised learning. This study employs a variational autoencoder (VAE) to generate a continuous microstructure space based on synthetic microstructural images. The structure-property relationships are explored using a co

While encouraging progress has been made on switchable nanopores to mimic biological channels and pores, it remains a great challenge to realize long tubular pores with a dynamic open-closed motion. Here we report μm-long, dynamic tubular pores that undergo rapid switching between open and closed states in response to a thermal signal in water. The tubular walls consist of laterally associated primary fibrils stacked from disc-shaped molecules in which the discs readily tilt by means of thermall

Slim guests are welcome: Aromatic macrobicyclic amphiphiles underwent self-assembly through a face-to-face interaction to form dimeric micelles, which further associated laterally to form porous sheets with nanometer-sized pores. The resulting sheets efficiently intercalated planar aromatic guest molecules, whereupon the porous sheets were reversibly transformed into closed sheets (see picture).

We developed a novel regioselective synthesis of tetrasubstituted pyrroles via the classic 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of alpha,beta-unsaturated benzofuran-3(2H)-one and azlactones (1) followed by spontaneous decarboxylation. The complete regiochemical control of tetrasubstituted pyrroles was confirmed by the orthogonal synthesis of complementary regioisomers (7a and 7b) simply by using different azlactones (1a and 1b, respectively).

Various biological systems rely on the supramolecular assembly of biomolecules through noncovalent bonds for performing sophisticated functions. In particular, cell membranes, which are 2D structures in biological systems, have various characteristics such as a large surface, flexibility, and molecule-recognition ability. Supramolecular 2D materials based on biological systems provide a novel perspective for the development of functional 2D materials. The physical and chemical properties of 2D s

One of the great challenges in molecular self-assembly is how to confer self-folding and closing characteristics on flat two-dimensional structures in response to external triggers. Herein, we report a planar ribbon assembly that folds into closed tubules in response to fructose. The ribbons, ≈28 nm wide and 3.5 nm thick, consist of 8 laterally-associated elementary fibrils in which disc-shaped macrocycle amphiphiles are stacked along their axis. Upon addition of fructose, these flat structures

With the goal of discovering a selective agonist of estrogen-related receptor gamma (ERRgamma) with enhanced potency, we designed a series of small-molecule ligands derived from a known ERRgamma agonist, GSK4716, that can substantially potentiate the transcriptional activity of ERRgamma. Individual compounds among a 30-member library of acyl hydrazones were pre-evaluated through in silico docking studies on the receptor cavities of ERRgamma LBDs using X-ray crystal structures cocrystallized with

Supramolecular assembly based on aromatic interactions can provide well-defined nanostructures with an understanding of intermolecular interactions at the molecular level. The peptide assembly <i>via</i> a supramolecular approach can overcome the inherent limitations of bioactive peptides, such as proteolytic degradations and rapid internalizations into the cytosol. Although extensive research has been carried out on supramolecular peptide materials with a two-dimensional (2D) structure, more ne

Supramolecular nanostructures based on self-assembly processes have received considerable attention because these structures can lead to dynamic nanomaterials. Among the diverse self-assembled nanostructures, toroids are interesting nanostructures with the potential for many applications such as channel formation because of their unique symmetrical and annular shape. Notably, a further stacking of the toroids can produce well-defined one dimensional nanotubules with responsive properties trigger

The instrumented indentation technique has been investigated to efficiently evaluate the mechanical responses of materials with few limitations on the shape and size of the specimen. There have been attempts to discover a direct correlation between the stress-strain curve and the indenting load-displacement curve by introducing the concept of representative strain and stress. However, it is still difficult to find relible parameters and to distinguish similar load-displacement curves that corres