Articles in 2019

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  • Dave Laffan, a Director in Chemical Development at AstraZeneca, talks to Nature Chemistry about safety in industry labs and his role on the Safety, Health and Environment committee.

    • Katherine Geogheghan
    Q&A
  • Two Q&As in this issue consider aspects of chemical safety in industry and academia. And when it comes to the latter, a Review Article concludes that much more research is required to better understand — and improve — safety in academic laboratories.

    Editorial
  • Tertiary amines are poor directing groups for C(sp3)–H activation using Pdii catalysts due to favourable β-hydride elimination pathways. Now, an N-acetyl amino acid ligand is shown to shut down this deleterious pathway, enabling facile arylation of a highly medicinally relevant group of compounds.

    • Vinod G. Landge
    • Michael C. Young
    News & Views
  • Marc Reid, a researcher at the University of Strathclyde and co-founder of Pre-Site Safety, talks to Nature Chemistry about safety, both as an academic scientist and as a director of a safety-focused company.

    • Katherine Geogheghan
    Q&A
  • A practical and selective palladium-catalysed process for C(sp3)–H arylation of tertiary alkylamines is enabled by the use of a simple amino acid-derived ligand. The reaction combines a range of multifaceted tertiary alkylamines with readily available aryl-boronic acids to form γ-aryl tertiary alkylamines and can also be performed enantioselectively.

    • Jesus Rodrigalvarez
    • Manuel Nappi
    • Matthew J. Gaunt
    Article
  • Screening commercial kinase inhibitors for antibacterial activity identified the anticancer drug sorafenib as a major hit. Subsequent structure–activity optimization created a new antibacterial analogue with high potency against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, including challenging persisters and biofilms, as well as demonstrating efficacy in an in vivo mouse model. The mode of action involves stimulation of protein secretion and inhibition of menaquinone biosynthesis.

    • Philipp Le
    • Elena Kunold
    • Stephan A. Sieber
    Article
  • Gaining a better understanding of the complex electronic structure of single-molecule magnets is essential for their design and development. The 4f-electron density distribution of a dysprosium single-molecule magnet has now been experimentally determined using synchrotron diffraction data interpreted with a multipole model. The magnetic easy axes were recovered by analysis of the 4f-electron density shape, which is clearly oblate.

    • Chen Gao
    • Alessandro Genoni
    • Jacob Overgaard
    Article
  • The tumour microenvironment has a specific enzymatic fingerprint, which provides opportunities for cancer therapy. Now, two studies show how this unique chemical environment can be used to produce reporter molecules or nanoclusters within the tumour that can subsequently be identified in urine or breath, enabling cancer detection and monitoring.

    • Alexander N. Zelikin
    News & Views
  • Synthetic genetic circuits leverage the information processing capability of biological machinery to tackle complex sensing tasks, yet they lack many of the advantages inherent to electrical computation. Now, an interface has been designed that provides an electrical output for synthetic genetic circuits.

    • Robbyn K. Anand
    • Kira L. Rahn
    News & Views
  • A curious chemical structure from the imagination of a child will forever be connected with a cancer diagnosis for one particular family. And now the challenge is on to make this molecule a reality.

    • Filucca Sophia Bjørnskov
    • Thomas Bjørnskov Poulsen
    Comment
  • Michelle Francl considers the long-lost art of the reprint card and the debate that once raged about its use and misuse.

    • Michelle Francl
    Thesis
  • A disordered metal–organic framework converts into a more porous, crystalline phase within 40 s following solvent exchange and desolvation. The rapid domino rearrangement of the whole lattice, which involves carboxylate migration on coordinatively unsaturated metal sites, is accompanied by a substantial increase in surface area.

    • Sheng-Han Lo
    • Liang Feng
    • Hong-Cai Zhou
    Article
  • A stable zinc-based metal–organic framework known to retain its porosity and crystallinity after exposure to moisture has been shown to undergo structural changes at the molecular level on adsorbing water. This dynamic and reversible response to the presence of water, including the rearrangement of bonds, is suggested to be the reason for the hydrolytic stability of this particular metal–organic framework.

    • Nicholas C. Burtch
    • Ian M. Walton
    • Krista S. Walton
    Article
  • Quantum dots functionalized with energy-accepting dyes hold promise for converting low-energy photons into higher-energy visible light for bioimaging, catalysis and solar energy harvesting. Now, it has been shown that non-toxic silicon quantum dots can be used in these systems; the transfer of spin-triplet excitons to molecules at their surface has been observed.

    • Pan Xia
    • Emily K. Raulerson
    • Sean T. Roberts
    Article
  • Flavin-dependent ‘ene’-reductases have now been shown to catalyse redox-neutral radical cyclizations of α-haloamides to form enantioenriched oxindoles. Mechanistic studies indicate the reaction proceeds via the flavin semiquinone/quinone redox couple, where a ground state flavin semiquinone provides the electron for substrate reduction and flavin quinone oxidizes the radical formed after cyclization.

    • Michael J. Black
    • Kyle F. Biegasiewicz
    • Todd K. Hyster
    Article
  • It is difficult to develop suitable fluorescent probes for live-cell nanoscopy, but a general strategy is now reported that can transform regular fluorophores into fluorogenic probes with excellent cell permeability and low unspecific background signals. Using this approach, probes in a variety of colours were developed for different cellular targets and used for wash-free, multicolour, live-cell confocal and STED microscopy.

    • Lu Wang
    • Mai Tran
    • Kai Johnsson
    Article
  • DNA is capable of self-assembling into a wide range of user-defined structures and so can be used as a scaffold to arrange binding motifs with nanometre precision. Now, DNA has been used to accurately display aptamers that fit the repeated epitope pattern of a dengue viral antigen to produce a nanostructure that can be a potent viral inhibitor or a fluorescent sensor.

    • Paul S. Kwon
    • Shaokang Ren
    • Xing Wang
    Article
  • Owing to the electropositive character of aluminium it is difficult to prepare Al anions; the few that exist are supported by nitrogen ligands. Now, a dialkyl-alumanyl anion has been synthesized that features a polar Al–K bond. This anion reacts as a very strong base that deprotonates benzene, and undergoes nucleophilic substitution reactions.

    • Satoshi Kurumada
    • Shuhei Takamori
    • Makoto Yamashita
    Article