Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

MOLECULAR TOPOLOGY

What tangled webs we weave

Nature Chemistry volume 10, pages 1078–1079 (2018)Cite this article

Subjects

Knots have been rigorously studied since the 1860s, but only in the past 30 years have they been made in the laboratory in molecular form. Now, the most complex small-molecule examples so far — a composite knot and an isomeric link, each with nine crossings — have been prepared.

Knot theory is a specialized subfield of topology. The origins of modern knot theory can be traced to the nineteenth-century work of four physicists: Herman Von Helmholtz, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), James Clerk Maxwell and Peter Guthrie Tait5. Interest in studying knots intensified in the 1860s with the development of Thompson’s vortex theory, which posited that each chemical element was a different knot in the ether. This encouraged Tait and others to begin a systematic enumeration of knots5. It is also appropriate at this point to recall Tait’s warning6 that: “…the subject is a very much more difficult and intricate one than at first sight one is inclined to think.” Some of these intricacies will be unpacked here, but for a complete treatment of knot theory and how it relates to molecular knots, the interested reader is directed to a recent review article2.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Fig. 1: Molecular knots and links that have been synthesized.

References

  1. Fenlon, E. E. Eur. J. Org. Chem. 5023–5035 (2008)..

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Fielden, S. D., Leigh, D. A. & Woltering, S. L. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 56, 11166–11194 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Kim, D. H. et al. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 57, 5669–5673 (2018).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Zhang, L. et al. Nat. Chem. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-018-0124-6 (2018).

  5. Przytycki, J. H. Chaos, Solitons & Fractals 9, 531–545 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Tait, P. G. Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh 28, 145–190 (1876–77).

  7. Dietrich‐Buchecker, C. O. & Sauvage, J.-P. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 28, 189–192 (1989).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Carina, R. F., Dietrich-Buchecker, C. & Sauvage, J.-P. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 118, 9110–9116 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Jamieson, E. M. G., Modicom, F. & Goldup, S. M. Chem. Soc. Rev. 47, 5266–5311 (2018).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  10. Evans, N. H. Chem. Eur. J. 24, 3101–3112 (2018).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry at Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA, USA

    Edward E. Fenlon

Authors
  1. Edward E. Fenlon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Edward E. Fenlon.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Fenlon, E.E. What tangled webs we weave. Nature Chem 10, 1078–1079 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-018-0135-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-018-0135-3

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing