Chemical synthesis articles within Nature

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  • Letter |

    This approach introduces an aryl substituent to the α-carbon of amino acids without a transition-metal catalyst, and uses the inherent chirality of the amino acid itself as the source of asymmetry.

    • Daniel J. Leonard
    • , John W. Ward
    •  & Jonathan Clayden

  • Letter |

    A system that combines nanoscale synthesis and affinity ranking enables high-throughput screening of reaction conditions and bioactivity for a given protein target, accelerating the process of drug discovery.

    • Nathan J. Gesmundo
    • , Bérengère Sauvagnat
    •  & Tim Cernak

  • News & Views |

    The growth of gold nanoparticles has been manipulated using amino acids and peptides to produce twisted structures that alter the rotation of light. The method could simplify the development of optical devices.

    • Guillermo González-Rubio
    •  & Luis M. Liz-Marzán

  • Article |

    Deep neural networks and Monte Carlo tree search can plan chemical syntheses by training models on a huge database of published reactions; their predicted synthetic routes cannot be distinguished from those a human chemist would design.

    • Marwin H. S. Segler
    • , Mike Preuss
    •  & Mark P. Waller

  • Letter |

    A photocatalytic strategy is described that generates diazomethyl radicals as direct equivalents of carbynes, which are often too reactive to use, enabling the functionalization of a range of medically useful compounds.

    • Zhaofeng Wang
    • , Ana G. Herraiz
    •  & Marcos G. Suero

  • News & Views |

    A highly reactive form of carbon, known as a carbyne, holds great promise for organic synthesis, but has been difficult to prepare. Reactions that produce carbyne equivalents now unleash this synthetic potential.

    • Rohan E. J. Beckwith

  • Technology Feature |

    Chemical probes and screening libraries can easily get mixed up or messed up, causing misleading results for unwary biologists.

    • Monya Baker

  • News & Views |

    In the 1950s, the discovery of a class of 'living' polymerization reaction revolutionized the field of polymer science by providing a way of controlling the molecular-weight distribution of polymers. The effects reverberate to this day.

    • Gary Patterson

  • News & Views |

    A synthetic strategy has been developed that provides easy access to structurally diverse analogues of naturally occurring antibiotics, providing a fresh means of attack in the war against drug-resistant bacteria. See Article p.338

    • Ming Yan
    •  & Phil S. Baran

  • Letter |

    Nucleophilic aromatic substitution (SNAr) is the most commonly used method to generate arenes that contain 18F for use in PET imaging; here, an unusual concerted SNAr reaction is presented that is not limited to electron-poor arenes.

    • Constanze N. Neumann
    • , Jacob M. Hooker
    •  & Tobias Ritter

  • Letter |

    The idea of carbon–hydrogen functionalization, in which C–H bonds are modified at will, represents a paradigm shift in the standard logic of organic synthesis; here, dirhodium catalysts are used to achieve highly site-selective, diastereoselective and enantioselective C–H functionalization of n-alkanes and terminally substituted n-alkyl compounds.

    • Kuangbiao Liao
    • , Solymar Negretti
    •  & Huw M. L. Davies

  • News & Views |

    Alkenyl halides are some of the most useful building blocks for synthesizing small organic molecules. A catalyst has now allowed their direct preparation from widely available alkenes using the cross-metathesis reaction. See Article p.459

    • David Sarlah

  • Letter |

    Enantiospecific total synthesis of (+)-phorbol in only 19 steps from the abundant monoterpene (+)-3-carene is demonstrated using a two-phase terpene synthesis strategy.

    • Shuhei Kawamura
    • , Hang Chu
    •  & Phil S. Baran

  • Article |

    WebNetwork analysis to determine the maximally bridged ring (or rings) of molecules is used as part of a strategy for the syntheses of architecturally complex natural chemicals; this strategy is demonstrated via the synthesis of the diterpenoid alkaloids weisaconitine D and liljestrandinine.

    • C. J. Marth
    • , G. M. Gallego
    •  & R. Sarpong

  • Letter |

    A new method for catalysing the cross-coupling of two different aryl electrophiles is described; the principle of this method, which involves cooperation between two metal catalysts that are selective towards different substrates, should be generally useful in catalysis.

    • Laura K. G. Ackerman
    • , Matthew M. Lovell
    •  & Daniel J. Weix

  • News & Views |

    Compounds that are sensitive to the components of air are difficult to use in chemical reactions, requiring conditions that are tedious to set up. A simple, practical solution to this problem has finally been devised. See Letter p.208

    • Marcus E. Farmer
    •  & Phil S. Baran

  • Letter |

    A method of supplying exactly the amounts of air- and moisture-sensitive catalysts and ligands needed for three commonly used syntheses in a stable, storable form in a sealed capsule is described; it should reduce the unnecessary waste of chemicals, money and time.

    • Aaron C. Sather
    • , Hong Geun Lee
    •  & Stephen L. Buchwald

  • News & Views |

    The concept of umpolung describes the reversal of the naturally occurring electrostatic polarization of chemical groups. It has now been used to make single mirror-image isomers of nitrogen-containing molecules. See Letter p.445

    • Fedor Romanov-Michailidis
    •  & Tomislav Rovis

  • News & Views |

    Drug manufacture can benefit from flow synthesis, in which raw materials are fed into a sequence of reactors, producing the drug as a continuous output. A flow strategy that capitalizes on solid catalysts has now been realized. See Letter p.329

    • Joel M. Hawkins

  • Article |

    A catalytic process is reported that begins with a highly selective copper–boron addition to a monosubstituted allene, and in which the resulting boron-substituted organocopper intermediate then participates in a chemoselective, site-selective and enantioselective allylic substitution; this approach is used in the enantioselective synthesis of gram quantities of two natural products.

    • Fanke Meng
    • , Kevin P. McGrath
    •  & Amir H. Hoveyda

  • Review Article |

    N-heterocyclic carbenes are powerful tools in organic chemistry, with many commercially important applications; this overview describes their properties and potential uses.

    • Matthew N. Hopkinson
    • , Christian Richter
    •  & Frank Glorius

  • Article |

    Natural products citrinalin B and cyclopiamine B, which contain basic nitrogen atoms that are susceptible to oxidation during synthesis, can be synthesized by the selective introduction and removal of functional groups.

    • Eduardo V. Mercado-Marin
    • , Pablo Garcia-Reynaga
    •  & Richmond Sarpong

  • Letter |

    Benzynes are capable of concerted removal of two vicinal hydrogen atoms from a hydrocarbon, a discovery enabled by the thermal generation of reactive benzyne intermediates through the hexadehydro-Diels–Alder cycloisomerization reaction of triyne substrates.

    • Dawen Niu
    • , Patrick H. Willoughby
    •  & Thomas R. Hoye

  • Letter |

    Randomly adsorbing chemically synthesized silver nanocubes, each of which is the optical analogue of a grounded patch antenna, onto a nanoscale-thick polymer spacer layer on a gold film results in a metamaterial surface with a reflectance spectrum that can be tailored by varying the geometry.

    • Antoine Moreau
    • , Cristian Ciracì
    •  & David R. Smith

  • Letter |

    It is shown that zinc sulphinate salts can be used to transfer alkyl radicals to heterocycles, allowing for the mild, direct and operationally simple formation of medicinally relevant carbon–carbon bonds while reacting in a complementary fashion to other innate carbon–hydrogen functionalization methods.

    • Yuta Fujiwara
    • , Janice A. Dixon
    •  & Phil S. Baran

  • Letter |

    Active materials are hierarchically assembled, starting from extensile microtubule bundles, to form emulsions with unexpected collective biomimetic properties such as autonomous motility.

    • Tim Sanchez
    • , Daniel T. N. Chen
    •  & Zvonimir Dogic

  • News & Views |

    A variant of a classical reaction has been used to generate short-lived chemical species called arynes, allowing the one-step synthesis of structurally complex benzene derivatives from simple precursors. See Article p.208

    • John T. S. Yeoman
    •  & Sarah E. Reisman

  • Article |

    Atomic-resolution time courses of phosphodiester bond formation catalysed by DNA polymerase η reveal transient intermediate states and an unexpected third metal ion in the reaction mechanism.

    • Teruya Nakamura
    • , Ye Zhao
    •  & Wei Yang

  • Outlook |

    Flecks of graphene are easy to make. But producing sheets of pristine, electronics-quality material is another matter.

    • Richard Van Noorden

  • News & Views |

    Gold is not as inert as was believed — it can promote molecular synthesis. A study uses scanning tunnelling microscopy to catch gold in the act as it guides the formation of one-dimensional polymers from saturated hydrocarbons.

    • Robert J. Madix
    •  & Cynthia M. Friend

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