Stereo-Recognition of Hydrogen Bond and Its Implications for Lignin Biomimetic Synthesis

The hydrogen bond (H-bond) is essential to stabilizing the three-dimensional biological structure such as protein, cellulose, and lignin, which are integral parts of animal and plant cells; thus, stereo-recognition of the H-bond is extremely attractive. Herein, a methodology combining the variable-temperature 1H NMR technique with the density functional theory was established to recognize the underlying H-bonding patterns in lignin diastereomers. This method successfully classified the intramolecular and intermolecular H-bonds with slope values varying between 50.2–201.5 and 221.9–655.4, respectively, from the natural logarithm of the hydroxyl proton chemical shift versus the inverse of the temperature plot. Moreover, this slope was found to be correlated with the interaction distance between the H-bond donor and acceptor. Finally, it was proposed that the stereo-preferential formation of the β-O-4 structure (erythro vs threo form) during lignin biomimetic synthesis was probably influenced by their intramolecular H-bonding patterns, thus making it easier to reach thermodynamic equilibrium.