Fast Amide Cleavage under Mild Conditions: An Evolutionary Approach to Bioorganic Catalysis

Abstract
The noncovalent aggregation of hexadecanoate in aqueous phosphate buffer with 3% acetonitrile gives rise to “catalytic clumps” that catalyze the hydrolysis of the amide group in 1. Amide cleavage is achieved with 108‐fold acceleration with catalyst concentrations of 10−5M at pH 7–8. These extremely simple catalysts, whose activity equals or exceeds that of catalytic antibodies, were found by rapid screening of hundreds of organic “clumps”. equation image