Volume 3 Issue 7, July 2020

Polyketide synthases are multi-domain enzymes that catalyse the construction of many bioactive natural products. Now, some of the inefficiencies and limitations of these systems have been solved by designing an artificial pathway for carbon–carbon bond formation via iterative rounds of non-decarboxylative thio-Claisen reactions.

Methods for the enantioconvergent tertiary C–H functionalization are scarce, but desired for the construction of valuable compounds. Now, a highly enantioconvergent tertiary β-C(sp³)–H amination of racemic ketones with copper/chiral phosphoric acid dual catalysis is reported.

In the development of chemical complexity—and the transition into biology—developing catalytic functionality is essential. Here the authors report the emergence of catalytic activity for two separate reactions (including one demonstrating a positive feedback on replication) in a self-replicating system.

Spinel oxides have attracted interest as water oxidation catalysts due to their efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Now, the covalency competition between tetrahedral and octahedral sites is shown to dominate the OER activity on spinel oxides, and the design principle is used to predict and confirm the superior activity of [Mn]T[Al_0.5Mn_1.5]_OO₄.

The cleavage of C–F bonds through hydrodefluorination is challenging and has been traditionally limited to unsaturated fluorocarbons. Now, a simple plasmonic approach based on the use of aluminium nanocrystal-supported palladium nanoparticles is introduced to effectively upgrade fluoromethane under visible light.

Computational chemistry has remained largely inaccessible to the experimental chemistry community. Here we report the VIRTUAL CHEMIST, a software suite free for academic use, that enables organic chemists without expertise in computational chemistry to perform virtual screening experiments for asymmetric catalyst discovery and design.

Site-selective functionalization at chemically inert positions within hydrocarbon molecules is a major challenge in organic chemistry. Iron-catalysed borylation at less-reactive positions vicinal to common functional units by sequential isomerization/protoboration of alkenes is reported.

Polyketide biosynthesis has remained exclusively based on polyketide synthases. Now, it is shown that certain thiolases can be employed instead, providing a method that offers distinct advantages for the synthesis of valuable products.