Volume 8 Issue 11, November 2016

Researchers should spend more time doing science than cataloguing every last detail about how they get it done, argues Bruce Gibb.

Omar Farha (Chief Science Officer & technical founder) and Ben Hernandez (Chief Executive Officer) of NuMat Technologies, talk to Nature Chemistry about the release of one of the first MOF-based commercial products and the challenges the journey posed.

Charge transfer through DNA has been well studied over recent decades from both a biological and electronics perspective. It has now been shown that charge transfer can be accelerated one hundredfold by using highly energetic 'hot holes', revealing a new mechanism that could help to create useful electronic biomaterials.

Due to its high reactivity, vinylidene — the sole 'electron-precise' isomer of acetylene — is only known to exist in the gas phase. Now, a stable base-free digermanium version of a vinylidene has been isolated by the clever use of suitable substituents.

Biological drugs can offer high potency and selectivity; however, this class of therapeutics often shows poor stability upon oral administration and during subsequent circulation. This Review highlights the materials and methods used to deliver biological drugs, and discusses how these approaches can improve their pharmacokinetics.

Natural collagen contains triple helices that are approximately 1,000 residues in length and cannot be formed by chemical synthesis. Now, short collagen-mimetic peptides that self-assemble into three-stranded helices have been designed. These peptides are inspired by the mathematics of tessellations, and the triple helices formed via this approach match or exceed the length of those found in natural collagen.

Charge transfer in DNA is of fundamental interest in chemistry and biochemistry and has possible applications in nano-electronics. Now it has been shown, through a combined experimental and theoretical study, that the migration of positive charges through low-lying orbitals of nucleobases (deep-hole transfer) leads to charge transfer that is faster than previously considered transport regimes.

Vinylidene, (H₂C=C), is a short-lived structural isomer of acetylene. By employing bulky and strongly electron-donating boryl co-ligands, the synthesis of an analogous group 14 vinylidene compound is reported. The digermavinylidene, {(HCDippN)₂B}₂GeGe, (where Dipp = 2,6-ⁱPr₂C₆H₃), is synthesized via oxidation of the corresponding symmetrical Ge⁰ compound K₂[(boryl)GeGe(boryl)].

A generally applicable small-molecule switch for protein function in live cells has been developed based on selective protein protection using unnatural amino acid mutagenesis and a bioorthogonal deprotection via Staudinger reduction.

G proteins are the key mediators of G protein-coupled receptor signalling, facilitating a number of important physiological processes. Now, the total synthesis and structure–activity relationship studies have been reported for the only known selective G_q protein inhibitors, the natural cyclic depsipeptides YM-254890 and FR900359.

Spectral broadening generally conceals the signatures of rotational and translational motion in solution-phase spectra. Now, using highly inert perfluorocarbon solvents, spectral broadening has been minimized allowing the translational, rotational and vibrational relaxation dynamics of highly excited CN solute molecules to be observed simultaneously.

By simply deprotonating a neutral hydrogen-bond donor thiourea it is possible to generate a class of highly efficient and tunable thioimidates that can simultaneously activate a pro-nucleophile and an electrophile. These bifunctional thioimidates exhibit fast kinetics and high selectivity for ring-opening polymerizations of cyclic lactones and carbonates.

[NiFe] hydrogenases are enzymes containing nickel and iron centres that catalyse hydrogen evolution with performances that rival those of platinum catalysts. Now, a NiFe model complex has been reported that mimics the structure and the Ni-centred hydrogen evolution activity found at the active site of [NiFe] hydrogenases.

Photoexcited holes in CdS nanocrystals rapidly trap to the surface and although they are integral to nanocrystal photophysics and photochemistry, their dynamics have remained elusive. Time-resolved spectroscopy and theoretical modelling have now revealed that trapped holes in CdS nanorods are mobile and undergo a random walk on the nanocrystal surface.

The staged hydrolysis of N-methylimidodiacetic (MIDA) boronates is a prerequisite for their application in small-molecule constructions. Mechanistic studies now show that two distinct hydrolysis mechanisms operate in parallel, the partitioning — which is dependent on the pH, water activity and homogeneity of the medium — can be readily quantified by ¹⁸O incorporation.

A motif was identified in the scaffold of an (S)-selective transaminase that enables the asymmetric synthesis of bulky chiral amines. This motif is transferable to other enzymes with as low as 70% sequence identity. The biocatalysts developed show high stereoselectivity and their synthetic potential was confirmed in preparative scale synthesis.

Naturally scarce but synthetically accessible, Gauthier J.-P. Deblonde and Rebecca J. Abergel discuss element 89 and its emergence as a candidate radio-theranostic metal for cancer treatment.