Articles in 2021

A rearrangement reaction — a classic of traditional organic synthesis — has been applied to a polymer, enabling conversion of a polyester to a vinyl polymer.

Cyanuric acid (CA) derivatives can co-assemble with polyadenine sequences to form a triple helical DNA-based structure bearing functional groups able to guide higher ordered architectures.

In two seminal papers published 25 years ago, Phillips and Remington reported the structure of the green fluorescent protein (GFP). These studies provided a blueprint for the rational engineering of GFP, catalysing efforts that produced a large and growing collection of fluorescent proteins and indicators of cellular activity.

Using ammonium bicarbonate as an additive can boost the reactivity of amines with carbon dioxide in microdroplet reactions.

In this Perspective, a vision of a fully reconfigurable microfluidic device that can change its shape and function dynamically is outlined. Reconfigurable microfluidic platforms can enable new functionalities, which have the potential to go beyond the reach of current lab-on-a-chip systems.

The activity of proteins can be controlled with azobenzene-based photoswitches. This Review describes the design of such artificial protein constructs and how their phototriggered, non-equilibrium response is studied using transient infrared spectroscopy, with an emphasis on ligand binding and unbinding processes as well as allosteric signalling.

This Review describes the de novo design of metalloproteins, which perform numerous functions essential to life. By understanding the relationship between the symmetry of the protein structure and the metal active site, we can design novel, functional metalloproteins from scratch.

Climate change is a chemical problem and chemistry and chemical engineering can provide some of the solutions. What kind of chemistry should we be doing?

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on the way we do research. Here, I share an approach to rebuild research capacity in a new collaborative fashion termed ‘teamlets’. Teamlets enable a team-based approach to boost morale, increase data integrity, faciliate interdisciplinarity and ensure continuity of expertise.

The study of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) using time-resolved techniques is relatively unexplored, despite being key to an understanding of their chemical and physical properties. This Review summarizes the applicable techniques and how they can be used to probe MOF dynamics.

This Review establishes a unifying structure–property relationship among chemical composition, centrosymmetry breaking, lattice anharmonicity, ferroelectricity, dielectric screening and the Rashba effect in metal halide perovskites from the perspective of stereochemical expression of ns² electron pairs on group IV metal cations.

Over the past decade, advances in azobenzenes have revolutionized their application potential, going beyond traditional uses as dyes and ultraviolet photoswitches. This Review describes breakthroughs in the development of red-light-photoswitchable azobenzenes and emerging applications in photopharmacology, photoswitchable adhesives and biodegradable systems for drug delivery.

Rapidly alternating the polarity of electrodes offers a new opportunity for synthetic chemists to obtain selective reaction outcomes in organic electrosynthesis.

A silicon-linker that tethers a diyne and a diynophile provides new mechanistic insight and control of hexadehydro-Diels–Alder (HDDA) reactions.

Synthetic siderophore-antibiotic conjugates can afford promising antibiotic profiles against ESKAPE pathogens and unique resistant mechanisms.

Microcrystal electron diffraction (MicroED) can determine the structure of proteins from crystals that are orders of magnitude smaller than those used by X-ray methods. Here, the application of MicroED to protein–ligand complexes is reviewed.

We propose that life originated in spontaneously formed catalytic lipid micelles. Accumulating experimental evidence shows that such micelles undergo compositional autocatalytic reproduction. Lipid-first constitutes a parsimonious alternative to the RNA-first scenario.

The combination of mass spectroscopy-based proteomics with molecular dynamics enables the in-depth study of metallothioneine-Zn(II) binding mechanisms, critical to cell homeostasis and Zn(II) ion buffering.

A geometrically constrained phosphine bearing a tridentate NNS pincer ligand can afford thermoneutral activation of N−H in ammonia.

Reversible addition–fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT) polymerization and atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) are evaluated in terms of their mechanistic strengths and weaknesses, versatility and latest synthetic advances.