Reviews & Analysis

Recent syntheses of the natural product 3-hydroxy-N-methylwelwitindolinone C isothiocyanate are taken as examples to answer an oft-raised question about the value of total synthesis.

A protein is modified to assemble with metal ions through judiciously designed coordination and dimerization sites. This elegantly controlled process arranges the protein into crystalline arrays — a useful form for exploring and exploiting protein properties.

A detailed magnetic, structural and luminescence characterization unveils that what may have looked like mere details have a significant influence on the magnetic properties of a dysprosium complex.

Recognizing that an analogy can be drawn between steric effects in drug discovery and asymmetric catalysis has led to a powerful technique that can explain and potentially predict the outcome of asymmetric reactions.

Obtaining detailed structural information about the interactions between amyloid-forming proteins and inhibitors can be extremely difficult. Two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy has now risen to this challenge to show the mapping of protein–protein contact sites in real time.

The cost, time and expertise needed for custom fabrication is a limiting factor when it comes to the development and production of new labware. With an increase in the popularity and accessibility of three-dimensional printing techniques, that may be about to change.

The first heavier main-group-14-element analogue of a ketone, which contains a three-coordinate germanium atom multiply bonded to oxygen, has been prepared and characterized.

Two-dimensional polymers can serve to organize chemical functionality periodically over large areas, but their rational synthesis has remained limited. Now, a free-standing, single-layer polymer sheet has been prepared and isolated through a two-step procedure — a photochemical reaction within a layered organic crystal followed by exfoliation.

Fluorescent labels can now be attached to a specific protein on the surface of live cells using a two-step method that reacts a norbornene — introduced using genetic encoding — with a variety of dyes.

The splitting of water molecules into protons and hydroxide ions, and their recombination, occurs by proton transfer along hydrogen-bond wires. Now, first principle simulations of the recombination reaction reveal new atomic-scale details of the process showing that compression of the wire plays an important role.

The technological relevance of zeolites, the desire to improve their efficiency and the inexhaustible synthetic options to tailor their properties have triggered a permanent evolution of this superclass of materials. Two zeolite nanosystems prepared by distinct approaches reflect this and offer hope for new applications.

A simple aldehyde has been shown to catalyse an intermolecular hydroamination, not by activating either reaction partner, but simply by bringing them into close proximity.

Transparent, metallic conducting thin films are key for applications such as flatpanel displays and solar cells, and heavily electron-doped ionic oxide materials have been intensively studied for this purpose. A class of conductors that are transparent in the near-infrared region has now been developed using a topological insulator.

Polymer vesicles have been constructed that entrap platinum nanoparticles in their outer surface. These serve to break down a fuel of hydrogen peroxide, generating water and oxygen and in turn inducing a propulsive effect.

Careful consideration of thermodynamics has allowed the design of nucleic acid probes that are highly specific and virtually unaffected by changes in reaction conditions.

Determining molecular bond orders can be a delicate and sophisticated task, especially if the electronic structure of the studied system is complex. Now, two different ab initio methods have revealed that C₂ and analogous species have a fourth bond, rather than the previously assumed maximum of three.

How do you create a molecular circuit board? Covalently coupling different molecules in a sequential manner in surface-based nanostructures opens up new possibilities and hopes for molecular electronics.

A sophisticated palladium(IV)-based species allows nucleophilic fluoride to react as an electrophilic fluorination reagent. This long-awaited reactivity will be especially useful in the preparation of radiochemically labelled molecules for positron emission tomography studies.

The handedness of supramolecular helices formed from achiral monomers has been controlled by applying rotational and gravitational forces, but at the start of the assembly process only. This demonstrates that a falsely chiral influence is able to induce absolute enantioselection.

Ultrafast chemical physics follows in the explosive wake of technological innovation, using light and radiation sources to study phenomena at timescales where the boundaries between physics and chemistry dissolve. UCP 2011, the second meeting in a series, explored the current state of the art in ultrafast time-resolved spectroscopy.