News & Views in 2024

Biological systems have evolved bonds that strengthen under load, enabling cells to adhere in high shear flow. A DNA-based artificial motif has now been designed to mimic these catch bonds.

The miniaturization and redesigning of proteins to bear fluorescence signals can broaden their scope for potential applications. Now, one can construct a range of compact artificial fluorescent proteins and develop protein biosensors by genetically encoding a natural fluorescent protein chromophore analogue.

Aza-heterocycles with rings of more than 6 members are underrepresented in medicinal chemistry owing to challenges with their synthesis. Now, the conversion of 5- and 6-membered saturated cyclic amines into 7- and 8-membered aza-heterocycles can be achieved via a ring expansion cascade reaction.

Multicomponent couplings offer powerful approaches for rapidly increasing molecular complexity, but typically require functionally distinct reagents. Now, through dynamic combinatorial chemistry, structurally similar amino groups can be efficiently differentiated, enabling the enantioselective aminomethylamination of dienes to prepare 1,3-diamines.

Membraneless cellular assemblies termed biomolecular condensates — into which diverse biopolymers partition — mediate myriad biological processes. A study now reveals that physicochemical features, not specific stereochemistry, influence whether small molecules are enriched within or excluded from a diverse panel of condensates.

Although supported metal catalysts are active for ammonia synthesis, there is a need for catalysts that are active under milder reaction conditions. Now, fullerenes are shown to be convenient and multifunctional promoters for ammonia production that also eliminate hydrogen poisoning.

A method has been developed based on proximity labelling that detects the interaction of specific proteins with endogenous triplex DNA sequences formed in live cells — significantly expanding the catalogue of putative proteins that interact with these DNA structures.

Hydrogen bonds get a bad rap in electronic materials because their weak, transient structure often results in poor performance. Now, this dogma has been turned on its head by intercalating molecules into two-dimensional superlattices to generate hydrogen-bonded organic–inorganic structures that feature significantly enhanced electrical conductivity.

Open-shell carbenes, which feature two unpaired electrons on a carbene carbon centre, are highly unstable compounds and are usually observed as excited-state species. Now, two triplet metallocarbenes have been stabilized by transition-metal and silyl substituents; the compounds have been characterized by various techniques including single-crystal X-ray diffraction, spectroscopy and quantum-chemical analyses.

Determining the ligandability of the human proteome can provide key insights to characterize biological processes and promote drug discovery. Now, multi-tiered activity-based protein profiling provides comprehensive proteomic maps of chiral small-molecule interactions. Over 300 distinctive proteins were identified to ligand tryptoline acrylamides, including stereoselective and site-specific events.

The enzymatic conversion of NH₄⁺ and NO₂^– to N₂ catalysed by bacteria is critical to maintain nitrogen balance in the environment and for wastewater treatment. Now, a simple abiotic catalyst, the naturally occurring mineral, covellite, shows a remarkable mimicry for the entire reaction pathway.

Liposomal systems frequently face challenges, such as low encapsulation efficiency and inadequate controlled release capabilities. Innovatively designed multi-compartment liposomes now overcome these limitations by facilitating precise control over cargo loading and release kinetics, and by serving as microreactors for biochemical synthesis.

Although all-solid-state Li batteries offer a safe, energy-dense alternative to commercial Li-ion batteries, their development is impeded by the sluggish Li-ion transport within solid electrolytes. Now, anion configuration regulation has been shown to promote Li-ion migration, offering a new approach for designing highly Li-ion-conductive solid electrolytes.

The translocation of alkenes and remote functional groups is an ingenious strategy to reorganize complex structures, yet it is rarely investigated, owing to the challenges in controlling multiple selectivities. Now, an efficient photo/cobalt dual-catalytic method has been developed to accomplish alkene difunctionalization.

Improving battery performance requires the careful design of electrolytes. Now, high-performing lithium battery electrolytes can be produced from non-solvating solvents by using a molecular-docking solvation strategy that takes advantage of intermolecular interactions between solvents to precisely control the solvation dynamics of lithium ions.

The construction of synthetic cells holds great importance for exploring complex biological systems and could potentially provide insights into the origins of life. Now, synthetic gap junctional channels have been developed as a building block to construct synthetic cells that can mediate intercellular transport of ions and bioactive species.

Drugs that target peptide hormone receptors are of great interest in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. In spite of limited data and vast design spaces, a bespoke computational pipeline has designed peptides that target two receptors with high potency.

The development of enantiospecific sulfone reactions has been hindered by the inherent acidity of sulfones, which result in deleterious racemization. Now, the synthesis of enantioenriched diarylalkanes has been reported via sufficiently fast cross-coupling that circumvents racemization of the chiral sulfone.

Decoding a post-translational modification requires the identification of its ‘reader’ proteins. Now a method can covalently trap the readers of lysine methylation using dimethylsulfonium as a methyllysine-mimicking ‘warhead’ to crosslink the tryptophan residues inside the binding pocket.