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  • Lignin-derived phenolic acids can be upgraded to styrene derivatives through chemoenzymatic processes, however, the scale-up of such processes remains challenging. Here, the authors find that controlling the water activity during the decarboxylation of bio-based phenolic acids, including through the integration of a water reservoir, enables high conversions and efficient reaction times, that can be combined with a versatile acyl donor substrate scope.

    • Philipp Petermeier
    • Jan Philipp Bittner
    • Selin Kara
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Carbocations are highly electrophilic intermediates involved in SN1 reactions, such as the direct alkylation of low-reactivity nucleophiles, however, in situ activation of leaving groups in such reactions remains challenging due to the unstable nature of the carbocations, leading to cross-reactivity between nucleophiles and leaving group activators. Here, the authors develop a two-step procedure to avoid such cross-reactivity: they generate carbocationoids as coordinatively stabilized carbocations in one nucleophile-free solution, and then complete the alkylation in another reaction vessel under mild conditions.

    • Hikaru Fujita
    • Daichi Shimada
    • Munetaka Kunishima
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Retention time prediction in liquid chromatography plays an important role in molecule annotation and method optimization, however, the accuracy of current quantitative structure−retention relationship models highly depends on the chromatographic method (CM). Here, the authors develop a generic model featuring a post-projection calibration to eliminate the impact of specific CMs, reaching similar ranking levels of putative candidates among different CMs.

    • Yan Zhang
    • Fei Liu
    • Qing He Zhang
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Computer-aided retrosynthetic planning algorithms such as Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and A* search can expedite the identification of synthetic pathways, however, achieving a high success rate remains challenging. Here, the authors develop an enhanced search algorithm by incorporating the exploration capability of MCTS into A* search, achieving synthesis success rates of up to 100%.

    • Dengwei Zhao
    • Shikui Tu
    • Lei Xu
    ArticleOpen Access
  • The effective control of chirality on surfaces is crucial for applications such as enantioselective heterogeneous catalysis and nonlinear optics. Here, the authors study the on-surface synthesis of organometallic polymers and their chiral expression on Ag(110), demonstrating that kinetic effects play an important role in determining polymer chirality.

    • R. S. Koen Houtsma
    • Floris van Nyendaal
    • Meike Stöhr
    ArticleOpen Access
  • CO2 electrolyzers with gas diffusion electrodes take advantage of improved mass transport of gaseous CO2 to the catalyst surface to afford increased current densities, but the complex and coupled multi-phase processes occurring inside the electrolysis device are not fully understood. Here, the authors use a two-dimensional volume-averaged model of the cathode side of a microfluidic CO2 to CO electrolysis device with a gas diffusion electrode and find that under high cathodic potential, the catalyst layer is prone to forming H2 and CO bubbles, mirroring observed experimental electrode instability.

    • Venu Gopal Agarwal
    • Sophia Haussener
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Boroxines, resulting from the reversible dehydration of boronic acids, have been incorporated as structural units into functional materials and molecular assemblies, but their applicability is restricted to non-aqueous environments owing to their inherent water instability. Now, a boroxine structure spontaneously formed from the 2-hydroxyphenylboronic acid dimer enables water-compatible dynamic B–O covalent bonds, expanding their future applicability.

    • Virginia Valderrey Berciano
    Research HighlightOpen Access
  • Covalent cysteine labeling is an important tool in protein modification, however, current methodologies suffer from limited reactivities and require the prior synthesis of individual derivative reagents. Now, a covalent cysteine labeling method that converts the cysteinyl thiol into episulfonium electrophiles in situ has been developed, enabling reactions with various nucleophiles in one step.

    • Huijuan Guo
    Research HighlightOpen Access
  • Pomalidomide is an E3 ligase recruiter exploited by PROTACs to degrade target proteins, but its application is hampered by the off-target degradation of other vital endogenous zinc finger (ZF) proteins. Now, the off-target ZF binding of pomalidomide-based PROTACs is evaluated by a high-throughput imaging screening platform, and minimization of off-target degradation as well as enhanced potency are achieved through selective functionalization at the C5 position of the phthalimide ring.

    • Huijuan Guo
    Research HighlightOpen Access
  • The Guest Editors of Communications Chemistry’s Atomically precise nanochemistry Collection discuss the importance of atomic precision in nanochemistry research, and highlight some of the field’s most pressing challenges.

    • Rodolphe Antoine
    • Qiaofeng Yao
    • Kui Yu
    EditorialOpen Access
  • At Communications Chemistry we are pleased to launch an Editors’ Highlights Collection featuring some of our favourite articles published in the journal in 2023. Here, we highlight each article and outline why it was selected.

    EditorialOpen Access
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Open Questions in Chemistry

In spite of decades of research and the enormous progress made, chemists continue to grapple with poorly understood aspects of the world around us. This collection aims to uncover open questions across the breadth of the chemical sciences. Each Comment provides an overview of a focused field of research, identifies key open questions, and gives expert opinion on how challenges in answering these questions might be overcome.
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