Building Proficient Enzymes with Foldamer Prostheses

Foldamers are non‐natural oligomers that adopt stable conformations reminiscent of those found in proteins. To evaluate the potential of foldameric subunits for catalysis, semisynthetic enzymes containing foldamer fragments constructed from α‐ and β‐amino acid residues were designed and characterized. Systematic variation of the α→β substitution pattern and types of β‐residue afforded highly proficient hybrid catalysts, thus demonstrating the feasibility of expanding the enzyme‐engineering toolkit with non‐natural backbones.