Articles in 2013

A structure-specific antibody generated and employed to visualize DNA G-quadruplex structures in human cells shows that these structures are modulated during the cell cycle and can be stabilized by a small-molecule ligand. This provides substantive evidence for endogenous DNA G-quadruplex formation in mammalian cells.

Pyrroles are a highly important class of compounds with a wide variety of applications in biochemistry, pharmacy and materials science. Here, an iridium-catalysed synthesis of pyrroles is described, starting from renewable resources, alcohols that may be derived from lignocellulosic feedstocks and amino alcohols. The reaction proceeds by a condensation reaction that liberates two equivalents of hydrogen gas.

An approach for the construction of complex and diverse compound libraries is described, whereby natural products are altered through a series of ring system distortion reactions. The compounds produced have markedly different physiochemical properties from those in standard screening collections and thus could offer advantages in the search for lead molecules that can be developed into drug candidates.

A crystalline porous organic cage molecule is shown to have exceptional specificity for separating different structural isomers of C9 aromatics. Uniquely, this solid-state specificity is preconfigured in the discrete molecular building block, which shows an analogous specificity in solution. Both solution and solid-state behaviours can be understood by molecular dynamics simulations.

Combinations of enzymatic and chemo-catalysis can result in powerful synthetic transformations. Here, encapsulation of Au(I) or Ru(II) within a supramolecular assembly prevents diffusion of the organometallic complexes into solution where they can compromise the activity of an enzyme. This strategy has been applied to tandem reactions employing supramolecular host–guest complexes and enzymes in the catalysis of organic transformations.

The development of a catalytic, mild and atom-economical transformation of alcohols to carboxylic acid salts and hydrogen gas is described. The reaction uses water as a source of oxygen, with a homogenous Ru catalyst at low (0.2 mol%) catalyst loadings in basic aqueous solution.

Fluorescent probes for bioimaging need to exhibit bright fluorescence, be biocompatible and offer several alternatives for attachment to biomolecules of interest. Here, a near-infrared silicon–rhodamine fluorophore is introduced that can be coupled to intracellular proteins in live cells and tissues and can be exploited for super-resolution microscopy.