Recent developments in dynamic combinatorial chemistry

Generating combinatorial libraries under equilibrium conditions has the important advantage that the libraries are adaptive (i.e. they can respond to exterior influences in the form of molecular recognition events). Thus, a ligand will direct and amplify the formation of its ideal receptor and vice versa. Proof of principle of this approach has been established using small libraries showing highly efficient amplification of selected receptors. The approach has recently been extended to address folding of macromolecules, including peptides.