Associate Professor ZHAO Wei from the "Biomass Chemistry and Materials" Academician Innovation Team

has published papers in the top international academic journals

Author: LYU Yanfeng

Release: WANG Xingdong

Translator: HOU Yumo

Associate Professor ZHAO Wei from the "Biomass Chemistry and Materials" Academician Innovation Team of the College of Bioresources Chemical and Materials Engineering has again made breakthroughs in the field of precision synthesis of biomass polymers after one year's effort. On September 16th, the related research paper titled "A New Synthetic Methodology of Site-Specific Functionalized Polypeptides: Metal-Free, Highly Active and Selective at Room Temperature" was published in the top academic journal "Angew. Chem. Int. Ed." (https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202009316). SUST is the only communication unit and the first author unit. Associate Professor ZHAO Wei is the first author and corresponding author. The graduate student LU Yanfeng of 2018 is the second author, and LI Ji, the youth teacher of College of Bioresources Chemical and Materials Engineering, is the co-corresponding author.

Polypeptide, also called polyamino acid, is a kind of high value-added biological material with secondary structure with polypeptide as the main chain. Synthetic polypeptide is an excellent model for the study of the relationship between the structure and function of natural proteins. Its unique biocompatibility, degradability and responsiveness make it exhibit broad application prospects in the fields of biomedicine and tissue engineering. In 2019, in view of the research status of artificial synthetic polypeptides with long preparation cycles, many side reactions, and the inability to precisely regulate the molecular microstructure, Associate Professor ZHAO Wei was inspired by the "multiple synergistic hydrogen bonds" that exists in nature and successfully developed a combination of high activity and high selective organofluoroalcohol small molecule catalytic system, for the first time, achieved a breakthrough in the green and efficient catalytic synthesis route of artificial polypeptides. The related research result was published in the top international academic journal "Nature Communications" with the title "Fast and selective organocatalytic ring-opening polymerization by fluorinated alcohol without a cocatalyst" and was selected as the highlight article (SUST is the only correspondent unit and the first author Unit). Also, this paper is the first report of our university's research work in the Nature series. After a lapse of one year, and after unremitting efforts, the research team combined the efficient Michael addition reaction with metal-free catalytic polymerization on the basis of the previous work, and developed a new kind of efficient realization of the functionalization of synthetic polypeptides for the first time. This method can not only realize the site-specific functionalization of artificially synthesized polypeptides, but also realize the precise control of the micro-molecular structure of functionalized polypeptides. It provides a green and efficient universal method for obtaining precise functional polypeptides for researchers who focus on the research of polypeptide functions instead of polypeptide synthesis. The research result was recently published in the top academic journal "Angew. Chem. Int. Ed."

Associate Professor ZHAO Wei is a "top-notch youth talent" of SUST, a key member of the "Biomass Chemistry and Materials" academician innovation team of Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, and a member of the ninth batch of Shaanxi Province Hundred Talents Program Youth Project. He mainly engaged in the precision synthesis of biomass polymers, the creation of intelligent biomass materials (non-imitation), and the application research of biomass materials in high-end technical fields such as medical biology, electronic sensing, and smart packaging. Currently, he presides over one general project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and one scientific research start-up fund of Shaanxi University of Science and Technology "Youth Top Talent". In recent years, he has published more than 20 SCI papers in academic journals such as "Nat. Commun.", "Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.", "ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces", "Macromolecules", "Biomacromolecules", "Chem. Commun". Professor ZHAO Wei has authorized two Chinese invention patents and one international invention patent.