News & Views

The chemoenzymatic potential for the construction of complex chiral molecules has not been fully explored. Now, Candida antarctica lipase B has been used to synthesize complex functionalized planar chiral macrocycles, providing a platform for the efficient and sustainable preparation of molecules that are of particular interest in drug discovery.

Understanding the surface structure of a catalyst under a reaction environment is challenging, yet necessary. Now, a combination of in situ methods reveals the reversible formation of a surface alloy as the active phase for core–shell Ni–Au nanoparticles during CO₂ hydrogenation, which could not be detected by ex situ methods.

The introduction of single abiological catalytic groups enables enzymes to catalyse new-to-nature chemical transformations. Now, this concept is extended to two abiological groups in a single protein scaffold to allow synergistic catalysis in a stereoselective Michael addition reaction.

Hydrogen peroxide is a powerful oxidizing agent with many applications. Now, a method is presented to generate it from the oxidation of water on a polytetrafluoroethylene-coated glassy carbon electrode with high efficiency.

Identifying the rate-determining step (RDS) for oxygen incorporation into mixed ionic and electronic conducting electrodes is very challenging, particularly since the local composition changes during the reaction. Now, a generally applicable method for identifying the RDS is presented, with the example of a Pr_0.1Ce_0.9O_2–x electrode.

The electrochemical synthesis of high-value chemicals is still far from industrial application, mostly due to the lack of stable and efficient catalysts. Now evidence reveals that gaining a fundamental understanding of an electrochemical reaction can lead to faster development of optimal catalytic materials.

Intensified interest in the area of nickel catalysis has driven the quest for an air-stable and modular Ni(0) precatalyst. Now, an air-stable Ni(0)-olefin precatalyst allows for the convenient set-up of nickel-catalysed reactions on the benchtop.

Simple methods to incorporate deuterium into organic compounds are highly sought after as deuteration can enable mechanistic studies or improve the metabolic stability of pharmaceuticals. Now, a catalytic hydrogen–deuterium exchange reaction using deuterated water allows convenient access to deuterated aldehyde building blocks.

Because of the high strength of N≡N bonds, N₂ is often employed as an inert gas. Now it has been shown that it can partly react to yield surface nitrogen species that facilitate C–O hydrogenolysis reactions on supported Ru catalysts.

Enzymes require many, often hundreds, of amino acid residues arranged in a protein fold to promote catalysis. Now, self-assembly of a single amino acid — phenylalanine — in the presence of zinc is shown to form supramolecular structures that promote hydrolysis better than natural enzymes on a weight basis.

Bio-inspired by cellular respiration, the richness of oxygen redox chemistry is a cutting-edge field for building lithium batteries. While the Li–air battery uses external oxygen, a new lithium battery offers a high energy-density and long-term cycling stability just by confining oxygen and lithium between graphene oxides.

Imine reductases are promising catalysts, facilitating a direct stereoselective route to secondary amines. Now, protein engineering has created stable and efficient variants that allow their application in kilogram-scale synthesis.

Given the importance of enantioenriched β²- and β³-amino acids as building blocks, direct and versatile methods for their synthesis are highly coveted by organic chemists. Now, using easily accessible 1,3-oxazinane motifs, a regiodivergent and enantioselective C–H functionalization method permits their synthesis in a straightforward and practical fashion.

The design of heterogeneous catalysts with tunable activity and selectivity constitutes a remarkable challenge. Now, a synthetic approach towards producing nanocrystals encapsulated within polymer layers has been developed, unravelling the principles to achieve control of transition state and product diffusion using CO oxidation as a case study.

Transition metal-catalysed bioorthogonal reactions are severely hindered in biomedical applications, mainly due to a lack of target specificity. Now, research shows that a trojan exosome vesicle can deliver a palladium catalyst specifically to progenitor cells for bioorthogonal catalysis, allowing localized prodrug activation.

Fusion systems have been designed that link enzymes to cofactors and immobilization modules through appropriate synthetic spacers. These modular biocatalysts (assembling catalysis, cofactor provision/regeneration and assisted immobilization) are suited to heterogeneous biocatalysis systems and can be efficiently used in continuous flow reactors.

Conventional experiments for generating proteins with improved properties by directed evolution are iterative, lengthy and costly. Now, a label-free assay has been developed for ultrahigh-throughput microfluidic screening that can dramatically accelerate the discovery of superior biocatalysts from a single round of genetic randomization.

A strategy using pressure was devised to structurally identify conformational transitions in protein ensembles, allowing the rational prediction of mutations that induce pressure-driven enzyme activation. These results highlight the power of flexibility–function analyses in protein engineering design and applications.

S-adenosylmethionine (SAM)-dependent methyltransferase enzymes have significant synthetic potential, but their utility as biocatalysts has been limited by the availability of SAM. An elegant and simple method addressing this long-standing problem has now been developed using a halide methyltransferase (HMT) enzyme for SAM regeneration in vitro.

Understanding the nature of active sites in carbon electrocatalysis remains a subject of dispute and a great scientific challenge. Convincing new evidence supports the fact that, for oxygen reduction, defects present in carbon materials are more powerful catalytic sites than nitrogenated sites.