Chemical Communications Blog

A pH responsive DNA walker has been designed by scientists in China.

Jingsong Ren and colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have shown that the walker can reversibly transport specific molecules along an assembled track under environmental stimuli.

The team believe that this work is an important step in obtaining artificial nanomotors with precise motion control and will be highly beneficial for future applications and complex operations in diverse areas ranging from drug delivery to nanoscale assembly or patterning.

Interested in finding out more? Then download the communication today, published in ChemComm, it will be free to access until the 17th January 2011.

A dual host approach for co-transporting potassium chloride has been shown to be possible in lipid bilayers, using fluorescence-based transport assays.

Phil Gale and his team from Southampton University (and a collaboration with Kansai University) have shown that the addition of both a cationophore and anionophore can result in a significantly enhanced rate of anion transport through a lipid bilayer membrane.

To find out more, download the communication today, which will be free to access until the 17th January 2011. This communication is also part of the ‘Supramolecular Chemistry’ online collection, where Phil Gale (as well as Jonathan Sessler and Jonathan Steed) are guest editors for this web themed issue. 

If you enjoyed reading the ‘Hot’ communication above, you might also be interested in reading Phil Gale’s recent Highlight on “Anion receptor chemistry” (Chem. Commun., 2011, 47, 82-86).

Whilst most of us are shaking snow from our coats and wearing extra layers in a bid to keep warm this winter, here at the ChemComm Editorial Office we’ve had several hot articles to keep us nice and toasty.

From nonporous to nanoporous
Scientists in the US have discovered that a well-known organic host, tris-o-phenylenedioxycyclotriphosphazene,
exists in two polymorphic guest-free forms; a thermodynamic nonporous high-density phase and the kinetic nanoporous low-density phase. To find out more, read the communication published by Jerry Atwood, Praveen Thallapally and their colleagues.

McMurry coupling
Hiroko Yamada and colleagues have made a metal-free and meso-free triphyrin compound via an intramolecular McMurry coupling reaction and used the ligand to form manganese and rhenium complexes. Read more in their communication.

Smart behaviour
Selective adsorption of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) onto patterned gold surfaces has been achieved by scientists in Belgium. Pascal Damman and Philippe Dubois have shown in their communication that pH-induced switching can occur, enabling both controlled positioning and release of CNTs, opening up future development opportunities for CNTs-containing sensing devices

Water-holding MOF
There is much research activity using metal organic frameworks (MOFs) as hosts to a variety of guest molecules. Richard Walton and colleagues have now shown that a flexible MOF, once immersed in water at room temperature, can form a crystalline hydrate and hold the water as a hydrogen-bonded tube. To see this clever research for yourself why not take a closer look at their communication?

Photogenerated holes
Transient absorption spectroscopy has been used to monitor the yield and decay dynamics of photogenerated holes in nanocrystalline hematite photoanodes. To find out what happens in the presence and absence of a positive applied bias you will need to read James Durrant and Michael Grätzel’s communication.

First replication NAND gate
In this communication, Gonen Ashkenasy and colleagues demonstrate the first peptide-based replication system that can be activated by shining light as well as being followed by fluorescence measurements.

Tailor-made mimicry
Thorsten Glaser and his team have designed a new dinucleating ligand system to mimic high-valent oxidation states of oxygen-dependent diiron enzymes. Read more on what they discovered in their communication.

Saccharide chemosensor
Gaku Fukuhara and Yoshihisa Inoue have synthesised a chromophore-modified saccharide chemosensor that can discriminate tetrasaccharide acarbose from 24 different mono-, di-, tri-, and tetrasaccharides. The sensors preferential selectivity for acarbose is pharmaceutically important as it is a drug used to treat diabetes and obesity. To read more, why not download the communication?

Let us know what you think of these articles by blogging some comments below. And if you have your own hot research, then submit to ChemComm today.

Scientists in the US have shown that mono- and hexakis-adducts of C60 fullerenes with crown ether rings can be made and then used as recognition sites for dibenzylammonium cationic derivatives, forming [2]- and [7]pseudorotaxanes, in solution.

The team are now busy exploring whether this hydrogen bonded recognition motif can be used to anchor C60 onto nanoparticles and flat surfaces.

Fraser Stoddart and his dedicated team at Northwestern University used NMR spectroscopy to look at the solid-state superstructure in more detail.

Fancy reading more? Then why not download the communication today, published in ChemComm, it will be free to access until the end of December.

Cheap and readily available halo vinamidinium salts have been found to be valuable precursors for a new class of singlet carbenes flanked by enamines, say scientists in Germany.

Alois Fürstner and his colleagues from the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, believe that the resulting metal complexes (which are stable and rich in electrons) may have a promising future in homogeneous catalysis.

Fancy reading more? Then why not download the communication today, published in ChemComm it will be free to access until the 24th December.

UK scientists have developed a fast and sensitive method for screening transaminase activity and enantioselectivity, using D- and L-amino acid oxidases, allowing new amine substrates to be rapidly identified.

Nicholas Turner and colleagues from the University of Manchester and Richard Lloyd from Chirotech Technology Ltd in Cambridge, use inexpensive and readily available reagents. Moreover the technique only requires a UV/Vis-plate reader to operate in 96-well microtitre plate format. The team plan to develop this assay further and hopefully use it for high-throughput screening of transaminase libraries.

Fancy reading more? Then why not download the communication today, which will be free to access until the end of December.

This article is also part of the ‘Enzymes and Proteins’ web themed issue, showcasing the highest quality papers in the field of chemical biology, specifically research that deals with enzymes and proteins. Why not take a look at this online collection and read some other relevant papers in this area.

Acid degradable microcapsules that deliver their cargo by bursting in acidic environments have been made by US chemists. The non-toxic capsules could be used to deliver drugs directly to cells, claim Jean Fréchet, at UC Berkeley, and colleagues.

Download Fréchet’s communication for FREE until 24th December. You might also be interested in a recent J. Mater. Chem. article on a tumour-targeting drug carrier with a pH-controlled release system, which uses graphene oxide as the carrier.

UK chemists have developed a new variation on a famous route to indoles that uses more readily available starting materials.

The Fischer reaction involves the functionalisation of an unactivated C-H position by way of a [3,3]-sigmatropic shift. It is simple and convenient – it couples a mono-functionalised arene with a readily available ketone or aldehyde – but is hindered by the lack of availability of aryl hydrazine starting materials.

Instead Christopher Moody and Martyn Inman at the University of Nottingham started from readily available haloarenes. They converted them into a wide range of indoles in just two steps by halogen-magnesium exchange, quenching with di-tert-butyl azodicarboxylate, then reacting with ketones under acidic conditions.

This new variation is simple and versatile, says Moody, making it a highly practical alternative modern protocol for making the fundamentally important indole ring system.

Download the article for free until 24th December and let us know what you think of this new route below.

Microjet engines called microbots that can transport cells within a fluid to any desired location have been developed by scientists in Germany.

Manipulating nanomachines to transport biological matter in the body has been a challenge until now. Samuel Sanchez, from the Institute for Integrative Nanosciences in Dresden, and colleagues have shown that by using a magnet it is possible to navigate a microbot towards a specific cell within the body, pick it up from point A and transport it to point B.

The group made machines made up of hollow tubular structures containing a thin layer of platinum on the inside. They found that the machines moved independently in a peroxide solution when controlled externally by a small magnet manipulated with a joystick. The microbots can be directed towards suspended cells in solution, where they pick them up and transport them to the desired location. They released the cells from the tube by rapidly turning the magnet.

Sanchez and his team hope that in the future their microbots could perform visionary tasks within the body. “I would like to see our microbots swimming inside the bodies of animals, delivering drugs to required locations, for example, in the vicinity of cancer cells or replacing diseased cells with healthy ones,” he says.

For more information download Sanchez’s communication, where you can find videos of the swimming microbots in the ESI.