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One-dimensional wires with metal–metal bonding have been studied for more than a century, but control over structure and properties has remained challenging. Here, palladium–palladium bonding is used to make one-dimensional wires with lengths of up to 750 nm in solution, whose molecular structures can be rationally modified.
The reversible covalent binding of mono-alcohols with high affinity is challenging because of their poor nucleophilicity. A multi-component assembly has now been used to achieve reversible binding of secondary alcohols through iminium activation and product stabilization. Moreover, such assemblies can be used to determine alcohol chirality and enantiomeric excess.
Contemporary macromolecular chemistry and physics offer interesting options for making, characterizing and manipulating single polymer chains. Although it is not yet possible to emulate the structural control and functional ability of biopolymers, recent advances have opened up interesting avenues for applications of these synthetic systems in microelectronics, photovoltaics, catalysis and biotechnology.
Colloidal hybrid nanoparticles represent an emerging class of multifunctional artificial molecules. However, unlike actual molecules, their complexity is limited by the lack of a mechanism-driven design framework. Here, nanoparticle analogues of chemoselectivity, regiospecificity, molecular substituent effects, and coupling reactions are used to predictably synthesize hybrid nanoparticle trimers, tetramers, and oligomers.
Chemists are able to prepare a wide variety of metal–organic frameworks by connecting together inorganic and organic building blocks of all sorts of shapes and properties. Now, a large-scale computational screening approach that simulates thousands of hypothetical MOFs from previously synthesized ones can help identify just which materials should be pursued.
The most complex non-DNA molecular knot prepared so far is self-assembled around a chloride anion from five metal cations, five bis-aldehyde and five bis-amine building blocks, in a one-pot reaction. The X-ray crystal structure of the 160-atom-loop pentafoil knot reveals a symmetrical closed-loop double helicate with a chloride anion held at its centre by ten CH···Cl− hydrogen bonds.
The taxane diterpene family is structurally complex and exhibits a wide range of biological activities, best exemplified by the successful drug Taxol. Here, two of the least oxidized taxanes in the family, ‘taxadienone’ and taxadiene, are prepared by total synthesis on a gram scale. The concise synthetic route described herein provides a scalable, enantioselective entry to the taxane family of natural products.
The fastest catalysts in nature for producing and oxidizing hydrogen are [FeFe]-hydrogenases, which make use of an extra one-electron redox equivalent from an iron-sulfur cluster that is outside the core. Now, a ferrocene-based ligand that oxidizes at mild potential performs this cluster's role in an excellent synthetic hydrogenase model.
Non-coding RNAs are ubiquitous biomolecules with intricate three-dimensional folds that are difficult to characterize. This Article presents an information-rich strategy for inferring RNA structure by combining nucleotide-by-nucleotide mutagenesis with single-nucleotide-resolution chemical mapping.
Conformational control can be used to transmit information in the form of chirality over relatively long molecular distances and could be the key to the preparation of minimalistic synthetic mimics of biological systems.
The historical context in which a scientific paper is published is an important factor that should not be overlooked, suggest Qian Wang and Chris Toumey.
Catalyst particles for fluid catalytic cracking are vital for the oil-refinery industry, but their activity is hard to diagnose because of their inter- and intra-particle structural inhomogeneity. With fluorescence confocal microscopy and selective staining, one can now pinpoint the catalytic activity within single catalyst particles from an industrial reactor.
Calcium is found throughout the solar system, the Earth's crust and oceans, and is an essential constituent of cells, shells and bones — yet it is curiously scarce in the upper atmosphere. John Plane ponders on this 25-year-old mystery.
