Supramolecular chirality, one of the most fascinating phenomena in nature and life, can be generated from orderly molecular self-assembly under non-covalent interactions, and plays an important role in life science, pharmaceutical chemistry, and materials science. Natural products, which are abundant in nature, have attracted immense attention in supramolecular chirality due to their unique stereostructures and multiple chiral centers. By transferring and magnifying the molecular chirality into supramolecular assemblies, natural products have been regarded as one of the ideal building blocks in fabricating supramolecular chiral nanostructures. The study of chiral assembly behavior of natural products will not only expand their applications in supramolecular chemistry, but also help us better understand the chiral phenomena in nature and life. In this review, recent developments of supramolecular chiral self-assembly based on small molecular natural products, such as steroids, triterpenoids, amino acids, sugars, and so on, are summarized and their prospects are discussed.
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Chiral self-assembly based on small molecular natural products
2.1 Chiral self-assembly of steroids
2.2 Chiral self-assembly of triterpenoids
2.3 Chiral self-assembly of amino acids
2.4 Chiral self-assembly of sugars
2.5 Chiral self-assembly of other natural products
3 Conclusion