Reviews & Analysis

JWST collects vast amounts of information about exoplanets light years away from Earth. Back home, the measured optical constants of laboratory aerosols are critically input parameters in models to interpret the observational results.

Gold catalysts have attracted attention for their ability to activate hydrogen towards the hydrogenation of organic molecules. This Review explores strategies to enhance hydrogen–gold interactions to help design new efficient hydrogenation catalysts.

Electrochemical devices enable clean energy technologies such as hydrogen cells, batteries and solar fuels. Their design is hindered by incomplete information about the electrochemical interface during operation. Complementary optoelectronic probes offer a path to improved mechanistic insights into such interfaces.

The unique properties of selenium have been exploited in protein science. This Review highlights the recent applications of selenium chemistry in protein chemical synthesis, modification, folding, stabilization, the preparation of therapeutic proteins and more.

DNA has emerged as an attractive substrate for molecular information processing. This Review explores the application of DNA for computing and data storage, as well as the route to integrate these fields.

This Review introduces solar reforming as an emerging technology to produce sustainable fuels and chemicals from diverse waste feedstocks using sunlight. The chemistry and concept of solar reforming, suggestions of key metrics and proposed directions to realize solar-powered refineries for a future circular economy are discussed.

This Review highlights the strategies and challenges for targeting RNA with small molecules in medicinal chemistry. It emphasizes their potential as drugs and tools for understanding complex biological processes while encouraging chemists to contribute to this field for future advances.

Performing logical operations with molecular excitons may provide opportunities for developing ultrafast, subnanometre and biocompatible computational architectures. This Roadmap outlines a framework for using multiexcitonic processes such as singlet fission and triplet–triplet annihilation to drive logical devices.

Lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases are key enzymes in biomass processing and pathogenicity. They are, to our knowledge, the first known copper enzymes capable of utilizing H₂O₂ to hydroxylate C–H bonds. This Review draws a portrait of the catalytic paths at play and highlights outstanding questions in their reactivity.

Thirty-four years ago, Curry and Rumelhart described a neural network-based approach to annotate tandem mass spectra. Their ideas foreshadowed several important developments in computational mass spectrometry over the past decade, but many of the challenges they discuss remain relevant today.

The total biosynthesis and engineering of complex natural products is now routinely achieved in filamentous fungal host organisms. This technology offers substantial advantages over traditional total chemical synthesis for the production of both known and new specialized metabolites.

Molecular chameleons adapt their conformations to the properties of the environment so that polar functionalities are dynamically shielded or exposed. This allows chameleons to display both high cell permeability and aqueous solubility, and to bind to their drug targets.

A decade ago, Zaworotko and co-workers engaged the principles of crystal engineering to demonstrate that narrow-pore (<0.7 nm) coordination networks are ideal sorbent platforms for small-molecule sorbates. This approach transformed sorbent design for such separations and has provided several performance benchmarks in trace gas capture-enabled purifications.

Stochastic processes, including chemical reactions, can be driven away from thermodynamic equilibrium through ratchet mechanisms. This Review explores how biology uses ratchets to achieve remarkable synthetic control and discusses the recognition of, and early progress in, ratchet-like synthesis in artificial systems.

This Review provides guidelines for electrolyte and interphase design and discusses LiF-rich interphases with high interfacial energies, high mechanical strength and high ionic:electronic conductivity ratios, which enable the construction of a wide range of highly stable, safe and energy-dense battery systems with fast-charging capabilities.

The construction of macrocyclic or assembly-confined phosphorescence resonance energy transfer systems in the solid-state, aqueous solution and hydrogels is reviewed, and the applications of these systems are discussed.

Encoding recognition units into sequence-defined synthetic oligomers enables hybridization into unique assemblies in non-aqueous solutions. In this Review Article, we explore the chemistries that enable production of sequence-selective, duplex-forming oligomers through noncovalent or dynamic covalent bonds.

Although Grignard reagents containing the heavier alkaline-earth metals have been explored, they have always been an academic oddity. New synthetic routes such as ball milling and novel concepts for application may result in exploitation of the unique reactivity of calcium, strontium and barium reagents.

Free energy calculations have great potential to accelerate drug discovery projects by predicting relative protein–ligand binding affinities. But how accurate are these predictions and how accurate can they become? A recent report assesses the state of the art in such calculations and compares it to experimental approaches.

The history of halogen-containing solid electrolytes is presented, and the advantages of halogen-chemistry for solid electrolytes related to crystal structures, migration pathways and ion transport mechanisms are summarized. Finally, the main challenges and future developments of halogen-containing solid electrolytes are discussed.