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Stereoselective synthetic routes use P3HB (a polyester produced by bacteria) as a chiral feedstock for related polymers that have properties more amenable to processing and use.

The selective synthesis of ultrahigh-molar-mass (UHMM) cyclic polymers from direct polymerization is elusive. Using a chemically recyclable polythioester as a model, it has now been shown that a common superbase mediates living linear-chain growth, followed by proton-triggered linear-to-cyclic topological transformation, producing UHMM cyclic polymers with a narrow dispersity.

Macrocycles are molecular structures extensively used in the design of catalysts, therapeutics and supramolecular assemblies but synthesis procedures that can produce macrocycles in high yield under high reaction concentrations are rare. Here the authors report the use of dynamic hindered urea bond for the construction of urea macrocycles with high efficiency.

Delocalized radical systems are appealing for controlling stereoselectivity in organic synthesis. Here the authors report on a Co(II)-based enantioselective radical system for the dearomative 1,7-conjugate amination of readily available 4-vinylphenols with aryl azides.

Biobased poly(γ-methyl-α-methylene-γ-butyrolactone) (PMMBL) has attracted interest because it is biorenewable and exhibits superior properties to petroleum-based linear analog poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). Here the authors report the synthesis of well-defined PMMBL-based ABA tri-block copolymers, enabled by dual-initiating and living frustrated Lewis pairs, which have superior mechanical properties compared to those of PMMA-based tri-BCPs.

Rhenium chalcohalide cluster compounds are promising photoluminescent materials. Here the authors report a new material in this family, Rb₆Re₆S₈I₈, which shows broad photoluminescence (PL) range, high PL quantum yield and long PL lifetime.

Geminal disubstitution of cyclic monomers is known to improve the chemical recyclability of their polymers, but usually at the expense of performance properties. Now, geminal disubstitution of a six-membered lactone has been shown to synergistically enable chemical recyclability back to the monomer and enhance the materials performance of the resulting polyesters, with properties that rival or exceed those of polyethylene.

Individual layers of FeSe grown on SrTiO3 superconduct at far higher temperatures than in bulk, but the effect of the film-substrate interface is poorly understood. Peng et al. find that modifying this interface has a significant non-trivial effect on the superconducting characteristics of FeSe films.

Radical chain initiation strategies are fundamental to the synthesis of small molecule drugs and macromolecular materials. Here a general, thermally driven and scalable method for reductive initiation is reported, in which inexpensive azo initiators are reacted with formate salts to form a carbon dioxide radical anion.

Pseudocapacitors are emerging as alternatives to conventional supercapacitors. Here, authors showed an uncommon charge storage mechanism in a high-rate conjugated polyelectrolyte and demonstrated practical pouch and solid-state pseudocapacitor devices with competitive energy up to 71 μWh cm⁻² and power performance up to 160 mW cm⁻².

Cell migration regulates diverse (patho)physiological processes, including cancer metastasis. Here the authors show that the chloride ion channel SWELL1 and the ion exchanger NHE1 are preferentially enriched at the trailing and leading edges, respectively, of migrating cells and regulate cell volume to propel confined cells, favouring breast cancer cell extravasation and metastasis.

The development of highly effective Earth-abundant catalysts for C(sp²)-N cross-coupling represents an on-going challenge in synthetic chemistry. Here, the authors report a nickel complex containing a bisphosphine ancillary ligand allowing room-temperature couplings of amines and ammonia with a range of electrophiles.

Fe-cyclopentadienone complexes have been widely utilized in various hydrogenation and dehydrogenation catalytic processes, yet their applications have largely been restricted to non-asymmetric versions. Herein, the authors report the synthesis of a chiral Fe- cyclopentadienone complex and its application in the catalytic asymmetric hydrogenation of acylsilanes.

TiO₂ and other metal oxides were interfaced with molecular boron clusters to form a hybrid material. This modifies the electrochemical and photocatalytic properties, enabling fast electron transfer and dye degradation under red light.

Enantioselective C–H amination is an attractive strategy for the synthesis of chiral amines. Now, a combined radical and ionic approach has been developed for 1,2-difunctionalization of alcohols by merging enantioselective radical C–H amination with stereospecific nucleophilic ring-opening, enabling synthesis of β-functionalized chiral amines.

Dopamine release occurs in spatiotemporal waves. Here the authors propose that dopamine waves arise locally in the striatum, and provide evidence for striatal acetylcholine waves.

Although several advances have been made in chemical Polyethylene (PE) re- and upcycling, energy-efficient and selective catalytic processes are still lacking. Here, the authors show coupling of an industrially relevant coordination copolymerization olefins with a functionalized chain-transfer agent, followed by modular assembly of the resulting telechelic polyolefin building blocks by polycondensation to afford ester-linked PE-based random and block copolymers which exhibit full chemical circularity.

Strongly reducing β-diketiminate complexes containing magnesium in its zero oxidation state are reported, among which is a compound with a linear triatomic Mg–Mg–Mg core.

While high-spin carbon-based polyradicals exhibit significant potential for applications in quantum information storage and sensing, their application is hampered by limited structural diversity and chemical instability. Here, the authors report the synthesis and isolation of a stable nonalternant nanographene with a triplet ground state.

Alternating copolymerization of cyclic anhydrides and epoxides is an interesting platform for the synthesis of polyesters from renewable resources, but the near irreversibility of the copolymerization makes it challenging to develop chemically recyclable polyesters with easy-to-tune structure. Here, the authors develop a recyclable polyester library from alternating copolymerization of aldehyde and cyclic anhydride.

While a large number of chemically recyclable thermoplastics have been developed in recent years, technologically bio-based and fully recyclable thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) with excellent mechanical properties are lacking. Here the authors demonstrate an all δvalerolactone-based polyester tri-BCP TPEs, which exhibit not only closed-loop chemical recyclability but also exceptional toughness.

Here, the authors show that Intracortical recordings in human motor cortex during attempted multi-finger movements reveal a largely linear code with two violations: magnitude normalization and greater shifts in tuning direction for weakly represented fingers.

A post-translational backbone extension acyl rearrangement (BEAR) reaction has now been developed that converts a ribosomal protein product into a new product containing a β-peptide, γ-peptide or δ-peptide backbone. BEAR reactions represent a general strategy to install extended backbones into genetically encoded proteins and peptides expressed in cells.

Cobalt(II) complexes of porphyrins have dominated the development of metalloradical catalysts. Now it has been shown that five-coordinate iron(III) complexes of porphyrins with an axial ligand are also potent metalloradical catalysts for olefin cyclopropanation. They are shown to react with different classes of diazo compounds via a stepwise radical mechanism.

Understanding and exploiting the redox properties of uranium is of great importance but stabilizing both low and high valent uranium ions in a preserved ligand environment remains challenging. Here, the authors report the synthesis and characterisation of a series of uranium(II–VI) complexes supported by a tripodal tris(amido)arene ligand.

Current methods for the synthesis of prostaglandins suffer from low yields and lengthy steps. Now, a strategy for their enantioselective synthesis has been developed with rhodium-catalysed enyne cycloisomerization as the key step. This concise route was scaled up, enabling the preparation of fluprostenol on a 20-gram scale.

The selective cleavage of inert C(sp3)-C(sp3) bonds and their subsequent functionalization is an important goal in synthetic organic chemistry. Here, the authors developed consecutive C–C bond cleavage from stable trisubstituted acids via photocatalysis and copper catalysis.

The Chengjiang Biota is the earliest most diverse animal community from the Cambrian Explosion (~518 million years ago). This biota is shown to have colonized a delta, highlighting the importance of this shallow environment in recording early snapshots of life on Earth.

Multiple resonance (MR) emitters with narrowband luminescence typically suffer from inadequate frontier molecular orbital levels. Here, authors incorporate cyano motifs at peripheral sites of the MR backbone to adjust the energy levels, realizing device efficiency of over 23% for stable devices.

The synthesis and isolation of uranium(VI) nitride complexes remains challenging. Here, the authors report an example of transition metal (TM) stabilized U(VI) nitride complexes, generated via photolysis of azide-bridged U(IV)-TM precursors.

The making of mirror-image versions of naturally occurring cyclodextrins (CDs) is challenging and constitutes an untouched goal of the CD community. Now a concise approach is developed for the diastereoselective synthesis of three mirror-image CDs in an efficient and scalable manner.

Deformation twinning, a key deformation mechanism that is rarely explored in superhard materials, is shown to be activated in cubic boron nitride and other cubic covalent materials under a loading-specific twinning criterion.

Surface dynamics play a central role in the biological function of natural supramolecular structures. Here, the authors investigate the nanoscale dynamics at the surface of synthetic nanostructure using binding affinity to surface bound chelators.

Stereoselective Suzuki–Miyaura cross-coupling reactions involving non-benzylic secondary alkylboronates are notoriously challenging. Here, an enantioselective synthesis of 1,1-diboronyl compounds using asymmetric conjugate borylation, followed by chemoselective mono cross-coupling with inversion at the diboron centre, is used to produce highly enantioenriched benzylic or allylic boronates, which themselves are useful reagents for a number of processes.

Array microscope with mirrored well plates enables automated, scalable 3D behavioral analysis of 48 zebrafish larvae in parallel, revealing complex kinematics and phenotypes missed by conventional 2D methods.

In this study the authors consider the structural variants (SVs) present within cancer cases of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium. They report hundreds of genes, including known cancer-associated genes for which the nearby presence of a SV breakpoint is associated with altered expression.

A short-lived diiron–oxo species — based on a nitrido-bridged bis-porphyrin 1 1platform — capable of efficiently oxidizing the strongest of C–H bonds has been prepared and spectroscopically characterized. The catalytic properties of this high-valent diiron(IV)–oxo complex were elucidated by studying the oxidation kinetics of a range of alkanes.

In 1972, Erich Clar envisioned Clar’s goblet, a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon featuring two unpaired electrons that are spin-paired. However, synthesizing it in a solution phase remains challenging. Now a derivative of Clar’s goblet has been prepared in solution, and spin entanglement at the molecular scale has been demonstrated experimentally.

While diamond is the strongest natural material, it fails to reach its theoretical elasticity limits and is brittle. Here, the authors show that thin <100>-orientated diamond nanoneedles can reach diamond’s theoretical strength and elasticity limits in tension.

Studying the nature of actinide-actinide bonds is important for understanding the electronic structure of the 5f elements, but the synthesis of these chemical bonds remains extremely challenging. Here, the authors report a strong covalent Th-Th bond formed between two rarely accessible Th³⁺ ions, stabilized inside a fullerene cage.

Charge-trapping memory offers many advantages over existing data storage media, though the spatial distribution of charge remains elusive. Here Yao et al. use electron holography to map its distribution in high-κ dielectric stacks under different applied bias.

A Type II Weyl fermion semimetal has been predicted in Mo_xW_1−xTe₂, but it awaits experimental evidence. Here, Belopolski et al. observe a topological Fermi arc in Mo_xW_1−xTe₂, showing it originates from a Type II Weyl fermion and offering a new platform to study novel transport phenomena in Weyl semimetals.

Aromaticity predicts the existence of the benzene tetra-anion, although it has not been unambiguously observed. Here, the authors have synthesized a tetra-anionic substituted benzene as a ligand and characterize the six-carbon, 10 π-electron system by structural, spectroscopic and theoretical techniques.

This study describes the mechanism by which Chlamydia trachomatis reprogrammes host glutamine metabolism in a c-Myc-dependent manner. The authors show that glutamine uptake via the SLC15A transporter and glutaminolysis are crucial for peptidoglycan synthesis and Chlamydia replication.

In situ mechanical testing and simulations unveil a reversible shuffle twinning mechanism enabled by bond switching, which gives rise to anisotropic tensile superelasticity in GeSe ceramics.