NJC Blog

Antifungal activity of phosphonium ionic liquids

Eva Balentova, deputy editor — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:36:20 +0000

Due to their toxic nature the ionic liquids became an interesting subject of development for new applications.

In this NJC paper quaternary phosphonium ionic liquids are discussed in light of their potential use as an antifungal compounds. The authors Diego O. Hartmann and Cristina Silva Pereira (University of Lisbon, Portugal) aimed this paper at investigating toxicity of several alkylphosphonium chlrorides versus a fungus, Aspergillus nidulans at a molecular level. They describe the use of qRT-PCR to analyse the expression of Aspergillus nidulans genes after exposure to alkyltributylphosphonium chlorides. The results indicate cell wall damage as the common mechanism of toxicity amongst these ionic liquids, while plasma membrane permeabilisation is dependent on the alkyl substituent length. The work provides an important basic insight to apply phosphonium type ionic liquids as an antifungal medicine.

A molecular analysis of the toxicity of alkyltributylphosphonium chlorides in Aspergillus nidulans by Diego O. Hartmann and Cristina Silva Pereira , New J. Chem., 2013, 37, 1569-1577, DOI: 10.1039/C3NJ00167A

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We invite you to visit the May issue of NJC

Yannick Guari, Assistant Editor — Thu, 02 May 2013 07:55:50 +0000

A focus article by Ernest Giralt and co-workers opens the May issue on the uses of ion mobility coupled to mass spectrometry (IMMS) to gain structural and dynamic information for a wide variety of biomacromolecules.

Applications and future of ion mobility mass spectrometry in structural biology by Abraham López, Teresa Tarragó, Marta Vilaseca and Ernest Giralt New J. Chem., 2013, 37, 1283-1289 DOI: 10.1039/C3NJ41051J.

The outside front cover was produced by Qin Wei and co-workers on honeycomb-structured macroporous films of graphene nanocomposites prepared by the breath figure method at both an air/solid interface and an air/water interface.

Assembly of graphene nanocomposites into honeycomb-structured macroporous films with enhanced hydrophobicity by Hongmin Ma, Picheng Gao, Dawei Fan, Bin Du, Jingcheng Hao and Qin Wei New J. Chem., 2013, 37, 1307-1311 DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ41031A.

On the inside front cover, Philippe Karoyan and colleagues illustrate their research on the synthesis and study using CD and NMR in water and alcohols on homooligomers of substituted prolines and -prolines.

Homooligomers of substituted prolines and β-prolines: syntheses and secondary structure investigation by Cécile Caumes, Nicolas Delsuc, Redouane Beni Azza, Isabelle Correia, Fabrice Chemla, Franck Ferreira, Ludovic Carlier, Alejandro Perez Luna, Roba Moumné, Olivier Lequin and Philippe Karoyan New J. Chem., 2013, 37, 1312-1319 DOI: 10.1039/C3NJ00127J.

Take you pick amongst the 4 letters and 42 full papers that composed this issue of May here.

NJC Poster prize winners at Paris 2013 Symposium on Foldamers

Laurent Vial, Assistant Editor — Thu, 02 May 2013 07:53:49 +0000

Two NJC poster prizes were awarded during the Paris 2013 Symposium on Foldamers, which was held at the “Les Cordeliers” Conference Centre.

The two laureates received a one-year subscription to the journal and a RSC book. Our thanks go to the organizers of the conference for their help in organizing these awards, and our deep gratitude to all of the senior scientists who served on the jury to select the two following winners:

Elisabeth K. Nyakatura, who received her BSc in chemistry from the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, in 2007. She then joined the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and successfully completed a MSc programme in Molecular Biology of Infectious Diseases. After graduating from London in 2008, Elisabeth returned to the Freie Universität to pursue her PhD in the group of Prof. Koksch.Her research is now focused on the application of phage display to identify preferred interaction partners of chemically modified amino acids in helical protein environments. She also implements the unique properties of these nonnatural building blocks in the development of biological active peptides. It is this interface of chemistry and molecular biology that accounts for Elisabeth’s interest in using chemical means to address pathogen-host interactions.

Liam Byrne was born in Wegberg, Germany in 1984. He received his undergraduate and postgraduate education at the University of Leeds; the latter with Prof. Steve Marsden, working on the development of new synthetic applications of the catalytic aza-Wittig reaction. Liam is currently employed as a post-doctoral research associate with Prof. Jonathan Clayden at the University of Manchester. His research has sought to maximise conformational control in a class of helical foldamers and exploit this to achieve stereoselective transformations over long (nanometre) distances.

NJC wishes them continuing success in their research!
A list of all previous NJC Poster Prize winners can be found here.

Hot article: Green Giant

Laurent Vial, Assistant Editor — Thu, 02 May 2013 07:51:48 +0000

Heterocyclic N-oxides are ubiquitous protecting groups, auxiliary agents, oxidants, catalysts, surrogates for heterocyclic boronic acids or ligands in metal complexes. In addition, pyridine N-oxide derivatives have been recently reported to represent a new class of anti-HIV compounds. In this NJC letter, Wei Zhao and Chunxia Yang (Nanyang Normal University, China) report an effective and green procedure for pyridine oxidation using the large Δ-Na₈HPW₉O₃₄ polyoxometalate as catalyst. In this system, reactions were carried out in water at room temperature with hydrogen peroxide as oxidant. The catalyst could be recovered and reused several times without obvious loss of activity.

“A green catalytic procedure for oxidation of pyridines catalyzed by a lacunary polyoxometalate in water at room temperature” Wei Zhao and Chunxia Yang, New J. Chem., 2013, Advance Article. DOI: 10.1039/C3NJ00149K (Letter).

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Meet our Authors – April 2013

Laurent Vial, Assistant Editor — Thu, 02 May 2013 07:49:10 +0000

Two authors of NJC’s April Issue are interviewed for this month’s Meet our Authors feature.

Our first author is Kathleen Mullen, who is an Australian Postdoctoral Fellow and a Lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology. Kathleen’s research is in the broad field of supramolecular chemistry, but she is particularly interested in incorporating porphyrins into interlocked architectures, anion sensors and molecular machines.

The article by Kathleen and her co-authors looks into he construction of interlocked architectures that will have interesting photo-and electrochemical properties. Porphyrins and bipyidinium moieties are perfect targets for such purposes, however the range of chemical reactions that are compatible with both species is relatively limited. The work in this paper set out to gain a better understanding of the size/structure of strapped porphyrin macrocycles and broaden the synthetic tools available for he construction of rotaxanes incorporating these motifs.

On choosing NJC to publish this work, Kathleen commented: “Because our work appeals to a general chemistry audience, which NJC caters for.”

When not working, Kathleen loves to travel: “Its even better that our work enables us to travel so much. Last year my visit to the University of Cambridge also coincided with the Olympics which was an amazing experience.” (see photo).

If she could not be a scientist, Kathleen would be a food critic. She thinks that it would be a great way to travel the world, tasting gourmet food along the way.

The second author is Ian Fairlamb, who is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of York (UK). His research group is currently working on catalysis, synthetic chemistry, mechanistic examination and carbon monoxide therapeutics.

For several years Ian has been intrigued by macrocyclic aryl ketone natural products, and their derivatives. He and co-workers noted that efficient synthetic routes to these types of structures were limited. Therefore they developed and exploited a Pd-catalysed protocol for aryl ketone synthesis. Silyl deprotection of the resultant products and a subsequent Mitsunobu reaction gave access to both 16-membered and 17-membered macrocyclic compounds.

On the main motivation for submitting his work to NJC, Ian commented: “The NJC experience, from paper subimission and revision, through to publication, is an efficient process. We wanted to submit our paper to a more general-focused journal, where it would be visible to different research fields. NJC occupies a unique position in this respect.”

Outside the laboratory, Ian has several favourite activities, including playing the guitar and being outdoors for gardening, walking in the hills, running and cycling. His favourite books include ‘Comfrey’, by Lawrence D. Hills and ‘Memoirs of a Fellwanderer’ by Alfred Wainwright.

When asked for an alternative career path if not a scientist, Ian answered running shoe designer (just do it…yourself !)

We would like to thank to our authors for making time in their busy schedules to answer these questions for us.

Why not submit your high impact research to us today!

April 2013 issue of NJC now published

Eva Balentova, deputy editor — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:31:20 +0000

We welcome you to NJC’s April issue, out now.

An article by Kathleen M. Mullen and her colleagues (Queensland University of Technology, Australia) features on this month’s front cover. This full paper reports on the synthesis of a strapped porphyrin containing bipyridinium [2]rotaxane, using the threading and stoppering approach and the Huisgen 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition. The size of the stoppers and of the porphyrin-incorporating macrocycle have been selected using a threading approach, various dumbbells and macrocycles.

What is of particular interest is the structure(shape)-relationship that will determine the viability of exploiting noncovalent interactions to drive the formation of the assemblies, and adapting methodology (such as ‘click’ chemistry) to make assemblies that might not otherwise be possible. Nice work that has been clearly presented and carefully explained.

New approaches to the synthesis of strapped porphyrin containing bipyridinium [2]rotaxanes Victoria Raymont, Hannah Wilson, Michael Pfrunder, John C. McMurtrie and Kathleen M. Mullen, New J. Chem., 2013, 37, 893-900, DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40762K.

In this issue, also check out 6 Letter articles, and 44 Full papers. Whether you are a materials scientist, physicist, medicinal chemist or biologist you are guaranteed to find articles of relevance to your specialist interests.

You can access and read the whole issue available online at: NJC 2013, Issue 4.

We hope you enjoy this issue and leave us a comment to let us know what you think!

To be alerted to each new issue of the NJC journal, sign-up for FREE Table of Contents email alert.

Meet our authors of the March issue of NJC

Yannick Guari, Assistant Editor — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:46 +0000

We are pleased to present a selection of our authors of the March issue of NJC. We thank each of them for accepting our invitation and having kindly taken some of their time to answer a few questions for us.

Our first author is Thomas Maschmeyer who is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Sidney (Australia) and Director of the Laboratory of Catalysis for Sustainability. His current research interests concerns all aspects of catalysis from new complexes, new materials and performance studies to process development and pilot plants – with the common theme of enhancing sustainability. Thomas and co-workers provide in his NJC paper a basis for the preparation of supported bismuth species and highlights unusual band gap shifts associated with supported cluster size variation.

Thomas chooses NJC as it is a journal that appeared ideal for the dissemination of this type of work that lies at the boundaries of a range of disciplines.

Outside of the lab, Thomas enjoys Kayaking. If he could not be a scientific researcher, he would be an engineer or a novelist.

Unprecedented blue-shift in bismuth oxide supported on mesoporous silica by Antony J. Ward, Anne M. Rich, Anthony F. Masters and Thomas Maschmeyer, New J. Chem., 2013, 37, 593-600 ; DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40847C, paper.

Our next author is Robert B. King, regents’ Professor Emeritus, University of Georgia (USA); and adjunct Professor of Chemistry, Babeş-Bolyai University (Romania); Associate Director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry, South China Normal University (China) and Academic Co-Director of the Research Center for Advanced Computation, Xihua University (China). Robert’s research interests are centred on computational inorganic and organometallic chemistry.

In this issue of NJC, Robert has authored the article Diverse bonding modes of the tetramethyleneethane ligand in binuclear iron carbonyl derivatives by Huidong Li, Hao Feng, Weiguo Sun, Qunchao Fan, Yaoming Xie and R. Bruce King, New J. Chem., 2013, 37, 709-716 ; DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40644F, paper. “A paper in which density functional methods is used to explore the chemistry of tetramethyleneethane iron carbonyl derivatives related to species originally obtained from reactions of allene with iron carbonyls” explains Robert who chooses NJC for publication of this article as this work is interdisciplinary since it applies methods from quantum physics and chemistry to an area of organometallic chemistry.

In his free time, Robert loves contract Bridge (Bronze Life Master), travel to unusual places and music.

Closing this month’s author selection, Dr. Feng Li is Associate Professor at the Nanjing University of Science and Technology, P. R. China.

His current research interest is organic synthesis/design, exploration and development of environmentally friendly reactions and he has authored in this NJC issue the paper Regioselective N-alkylation with alcohols for the preparation of 2-(N-alkylamino)quinazolines and 2-(N-alkylamino)pyrimidines by Feng Li, Lin Chen, Qikai Kang, Jianguang Cai and Guangjun Zhu, New J. Chem., 2013, 37, 624-631 ; DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ41021D, Paper.

This paper shows that in the presence of the [Cp*IrCl₂]₂/NaOH system, the direct N-alkylation of 2-aminoquinazolines and 2-aminopyrimidines with alcohols afforded the N-exosubstituted 2-(N-alkylamino)quinazolines and 2-(N-alkylamino)pyrimidines with high yields and complete regioselectivities. The protocol is highly attractive because of easily available starting materials, high atom efficiency and environmental friendliness.

“NJC is prospective and promising journal in the field of chemistry”, says Feng.

Out of the lab, Feng’s favorite activity is sport. If he could not be a scientist, Feng would probably be an Art designer.