Reviews & Analysis

Gut microbes have enzymes that break down the heavily glycosylated mucin protein of host animals, but known enzymes recognize only one glycan chain. Now, bioinformatic exploration has uncovered a family of mucinases that targets dense sugar residues.

Malonyl-CoA is one of the fundamental building blocks for the synthesis of industrially or pharmaceutically important chemicals, but its biosynthesis via the innate acetyl-CoA carboxylation pathway remains slow and inefficient. Now, an artificial non-carboxylative malonyl-CoA biosynthetic pathway has been developed, significantly enhancing malonyl-CoA supply by boosting carbon and energy efficiency while sidestepping the inhibitions by host cell regulations.

Ethylene, despite being a cornerstone of the modern petrochemical industry, continues to pose challenges during its production. Now, a dual single-atom catalyst design emerges as a remarkable solution for the efficient semi-hydrogenation of acetylene.

Material–microbe hybrids represent an interesting class of catalyst with potential for high energy efficiency and product selectivity. In this Perspective the authors discuss some of the difficulties in understanding these interdisciplinary systems and the attempts to unify the approaches taken by different research communities to further the field.

The use of data science tools in catalysis research has experienced a surge in the past 10–15 years. This Review provides a holistic overview and categorization of the field across the various approaches and subdisciplines in catalysis.

Biomass is a renewable source of carbon that can be exploited to produce valuable chemicals and fuels. This Perspective discusses the electrochemical valorization of biomass, identifying specific chemical transformations in which the approach can excel.

The development of bimetallic catalysts is often hindered by the heavy workload of the classical trial-and-error method. Now, a distinct mechanism demonstrates that breaking down the net thermochemical reaction into the corresponding electrochemical half-reactions offers a facile approach to design bimetallic catalysts by analysing each putative half-reaction.

While skeletal editing stands as a powerful approach for simplifying synthetic procedures and obtaining complex molecules, viable methodologies remain limited. Now, a smart photoredox protocol, involving the insertion of carbon atoms into the indene core, gives access to a wide library of functionalized naphthalenes.

The lack of stability of critical raw material-free electrocatalysts during the oxygen evolution reaction in acidic electrolytes lies beneath the use of Ir-based electrocatalysts in polymeric water electrolysis. Here, a strategy to enhance γ-MnO₂ stability in acid is proposed. Theoretical and spectroscopic approaches reveal that increasing the fraction of O atoms in the appropriate position, namely O_pla, prevents Mn dissolution during water electrolysis.

The electrochemical synthesis of ammonia via the lithium-mediated reduction of N₂ holds great promise to replace the carbon- and energy-intensive Haber–Bosch process. This Review discusses this approach and examines the critical role of the catalytic solid–electrolyte interphase formed on the electrode.

The coenzyme Q biosynthetic pathway has evaded full characterization for decades, in part due to the inherent insolubility of coenzyme Q and the instability of its membrane-associated biosynthetic enzymes. Now, researchers have resurrected an active ancestral coenzyme Q metabolon in vitro that has unveiled valuable insights into previously uncharacterized aspects of coenzyme Q biosynthesis.

A deeper understanding of reaction mechanisms should lead to improvements in the selectivity of organic electrosynthesis methods. This approach has now been used to explain the role of magnesium diacetate in the Ag-electrocatalysed reductive coupling of sp³ organic chlorides with aldehydes or ketones with increased selectivity for the desired alcohol product.

Chiral BINOL-phosphates have qualified as privileged Brønsted acid organocatalysts, providing solutions to many challenging enantioselective transformations for a wide range of substrates under mild reaction conditions. Here we revisit the story of their origins.

The ab initio atomistic thermodynamics approach, coined by Reuter and Scheffler formally in 2001, remains pivotal for understanding and predicting the stable surfaces of thermal catalysts under technical conditions.

Traditional catalyst synthesis primarily hinges on liquid-phase methods. Nevertheless, a quarter of a century ago, the advent of vapour-phase methods such as atomic layer deposition opened up important alternatives to atomically tailor catalysts and boost their performance.

Electrocatalysis would not be the same without the rotating disk electrode. Its invention in the mid-twentieth century enabled immense developments, which rendered it a classic technique in electrochemistry. The rotating disk electrode will remain a cornerstone of electrocatalysis with further advances that bridge the gap with real systems.

Elucidating the origin of light-induced reaction rate enhancement in plasmonic photocatalysis is very challenging. Now, bimetallic supercrystals are reported to boost photocatalytic hydrogen evolution from formic acid with the sole aid of intensified electric fields.

Iron–nitrogen–carbon (FeNC) catalysts are a viable alternative to platinum, but still lack the necessary performance. Now, pyrolysis under forming gas is found as a path to boosting their site density, activity and durability.

Enantioselective synthesis of chiral cyclobutanes via direct cycloaddition of C–C single bonds with C=C double bonds has remained an unmet challenge. Now, a photoelectrocatalytic system enabling asymmetric dehydrogenative [2+2] cycloaddition of alkyl ketones and alkenes has been developed.

With climate change concerns deepening, CO₂ fixation pathways to produce value-added chemicals are currently of interest. Now, synthetic biology and machine learning help developing such a pathway across modules that have been tested in vivo in Escherichia coli for the production of acetyl coenzyme A.