Volume 3 Issue 10, October 2019

The Lewis acidity of trihaloboranes has now also been observed for tetrahalodiboranes, which bind halides to give hexahalodiborates — a new anion class.

Models for polyhedral clusters with different symmetries enable us to understand their electronic structures and predict the formation of new clusters.

A proton-neutral enantioselective Michael addition reaction has been described in which an aryloxide acts as leaving group, proton shuttle and Lewis base.

Hierarchical self-assembly and crystallization is ubiquitous in nature and is of key importance for creation of complex superstructures. Herein, Yuan and co-workers propose that hierarchically oriented organization guides the formation of such complex systems, especially in supramolecular peptide crystals.

Artificial intelligence has recently seen numerous applications in synthetic organic chemistry. Advanced pattern-recognition heuristics may facilitate the access to chemical matter of interest and complement chemical intuition in the near future.

Metabolic glycoengineering provides a strategy to manipulate glycan structure and function to detect, monitor and treat disease. In this Review, we discuss the chemistry underlying metabolic glycoengineering and highlight recent advances towards the clinical translation of this technology.