Abstract
Helical structures are ubiquitous in nature and exhibit fascinating properties. They are inherently chiral, and many rely on hydrogen bonds to stabilize their conformation. Homopolypeptides of the glutamate-type form α-helical sec-ondary structures and are considered rigid-rod polymers. They form lyotropic liquid crystalline phases in helicogenic sol-vents. Over the last decade this property has been exploited in the NMR-based structure elucidation of organic compounds making anisotropic NMR observables, such as residual dipolar couplings (RDCs), accessible. However, many alignment media are limited in their compatibility, especially with polar (non-helicogenic) solvents like DMSO, and thus also in their analyte compatibility. Herein, we present poly-γ-(4-propargyloxybenzyl)-L-glutamate (PPOBLG) as an exceptionally versatile align-ment medium compatible with several organic solvents, including DMSO and acetone. The polymer not only allows extraction of RDCs in all these solvents but also provides linearly independent orientations of a model compound by simple variation of the solvent. Moreover, a remarkably high enantiodifferentiation is observed. We furthermore show that these improved prop-erties make it compatible with various natural products containing a wide variety of functional groups.