Indirect Optical Analysis of a Dynamic Chemical System

The paper reports a straightforward methodology for the analysis of dynamic covalent equilibria, which can also be extended towards competitive reactions that yield covalent products or kinetically inert noncovalent complexes. The stronghold of the approach is the disconnection between the molecular structure of the target and the output signal, which allows for an independent optimization of the latter. Herein, a UV/Vis signal is presented as an output, although the use of fluorescence or catalytic readouts are equally feasible. Thus, the simple output makes this methodology very attractive for parallel screening of competitive reactions in a microtiter plate format. Additionally, the paper shows that the protocol can be applied for the analysis of a complex chemical system, which may be particularly valuable for rapid assessment of the adaptation potential of dynamic combinatorial libraries to external stimuli.