News & Views in 2010

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  • Rational synthesis of large polycyclic molecules is on its way. A bottom-up strategy for molecular assembly to tailor-make new molecules has been applied to fabricate nanographenes.

    • José A. Martin-Gago
    News & Views
  • Helical macromolecules are ubiquitous in nature, and almost always adopt a one-handed conformation. Synthetic systems, in contrast, are typically obtained in racemic right- and left-handed mixtures. A helical phenylene oligomer has now been prepared that forms a non-racemic mixture on crystallization, and on oxidation locks one conformation in.

    • Eiji Yashima
    News & Views
  • Transition-metal carbenes and alkylidenes are sometimes considered similar species with subtly different bonding and reactivities. Investigations into scandium and yttrium carbenes have raised questions about our understanding — and definition — of these widely used compounds.

    • Daniel J. Mindiola
    • Jennifer Scott
    News & Views
  • The self-assembly of molecules into porous two-dimensional networks on surfaces has been well studied in recent years, but now the concept has been extended to three dimensions with a little help from fullerene molecules.

    • Steven De Feyter
    News & Views
  • The annual Bürgenstock conference brings together a select band of chemists to talk about the many different facets of stereochemistry, and the unique format of the meeting encourages plenty of discussion and debate alongside the traditional lectures and poster presentations.

    • Paul W. Davies
    News & Views
  • Self-assembly typically occurs through reversible interactions that slowly arrange building blocks into the most thermodynamically favoured structure. The involvement of enzymatic catalysis in the process has now enabled the rapid construction of a variety of low-defect architectures.

    • Ehud Gazit
    News & Views
  • Testing for enzymes is important for diagnosing various medical conditions but can be problematic because of the complexity of physiological media such as blood. Now, a method of detecting phospholipases has been developed that neatly couples their concentration with the aggregation of gold nanoparticles.

    • Nicholas A. Melosh
    News & Views
  • The mutual and specific recognition that can be exhibited between 'host' and 'guest' molecules occurs over very small length scales, but this phenomenon has now been demonstrated using macroscopic gels that self-assemble before your eyes.

    • Jonathan W. Steed
    News & Views
  • An organocatalytic method for constructing biaryls joins an increasing number of articles reporting metal-free analogues to reactions that traditionally have required a transition-metal catalyst. What does it take to prove that metal is not involved, and does it really matter?

    • Nicholas E. Leadbeater
    News & Views
  • Computational studies have been used to accurately model the properties of a metal–organic framework. The material, subsequently synthesized, lived up to the predicted high surface area and sorption ability.

    • George K. H. Shimizu
    News & Views
  • Hydration is known to affect molecular-recognition processes, such as those between proteins and ligands. Now, theoretical simulations provide thermodynamic insight into cavity–ligand binding, revealing how it is predominantly driven by the behaviour of the few surrounding water molecules.

    • Gerhard Hummer
    News & Views
  • The dynamics of a complex chemical reaction that occurs through a well-defined intermediate have been followed at the single-molecule level using a 'nanoreactor' set-up, revealing a primary hydrogen isotope effect that is invisible to ensemble experiments.

    • Sergi Garcia-Manyes
    News & Views
  • Chemists have now prepared the longest known stable subunit of the elusive all-carbon polymer — carbyne. Their results suggest that carbyne itself would have a polyyne-like rather than a cumulene structure.

    • Michael M. Haley
    News & Views
  • Compression of the active sites of enzymes has been linked to the bulk of amino acid side chains, but now experiments highlight that the harder we look, the more curious the relationship between protein structure and function becomes.

    • Judith P. Klinman
    News & Views
  • Enzymes keep their catalytic reactivity under fine control, letting appropriate molecules approach their active sites to perform reactions. Now, studies of calixarenes attached to gold clusters to emulate this behaviour in synthetic systems suggest that the key to accessibility could be a matter of the relative sizes of ligands and metal clusters.

    • Graham J. Hutchings
    News & Views
  • The efficient catalytic oxidation of water to dioxygen in the solid state is one of the challenges to be overcome to build sun-driven and/or electrocatalytic water-splitting devices. Now, an effective water-oxidation hybrid catalyst system has been made by attaching a ruthenium-polyoxometallate complex to a carbon nanotube.

    • Antoni Llobet
    News & Views