Chemical Communications Blog

Chemical Communications is glad to publish a themed collection on Kaleidoscope: A discussion meeting in chemistry.  Guest Edited by Professor G. Naresh Patwari (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay), Professor Jyotishman Dasgupta and Professor Vaibhav Prabhudesai (both from Tata Institute of fundamental Research, Mumbai), this collection highlights the exciting research by the speakers of Kaleidoscope-2023.

Kaleidoscope is an annual gathering of Indian investigators working in various fields of in chemistry and allied areas. Started in 2014, this meeting is a platform for young investigators to discuss, identify and seek suggestions and collaborations among the peer group on contemporary research trends in chemistry and allied areas, particularly biochemistry, chemical biology, and material science. The primary aim of this meeting is to provide a platform for the exchange of new ideas and fresh perspectives among chemists of all different fields of research.

This invitation-only meeting brings young investigators from diverse areas of chemistry together to share their ideas, encouraging productive collaborations in interdisciplinary sciences. Over the years, this meeting became very popular and became an annual affair with different research groups across India took turns to organize and is typically organized in the first weekend of July. The Kaleidoscope-2023 edition of this meeting (July 6–9, 2023), was the 9^th in the series  and was organized in the serene confines of YAAN Wellness Retreat, Udaipur.

The meeting consisted of 10-minute presentations followed by 20-minute Q&A session. A post-dinner round-table session was held to discuss various aspects of presentations made during the day which included suggestions, possibility of diversification and collaborations. The unique aspect of the meeting is the absence of preassigned speaking slots and a lottery is used to pick the first slot each speaker at the end of his talk will pick the speaker for the next slot by lottery. Kaleidoscope is a highly interactive and focused meeting where the delegates stay for the entire duration of the meeting and are refrained from using laptops/mobile phones and other communication devices during the course of presentations.

Kaleidoscope-2023 had 36 participants (see photograph), including representatives from Royal Society of Chemistry and American Chemical Society. The list of topics ranged from anti-biotic resistance, biomolecular simulations, dynamics in complex chemical systems, exciton dynamics, intermolecular interactions, photochemistry, sensing in biology, and several others. All the participants of the meeting were invited to contribute to the themed collection.

The Themed Collection can be accessed here:  rsc.li/4cdECA5

Group picture of all the participants in the Kaleidoscope 2024 meeting held at the Yaan Wellness Retreat, Udaipur.

From left to right (Standing): Sajesh Thomas, Ankona Dutta, Vamsee Voora, Sarit Agasti, Jagannath Mondal, Pratap Vishnoi, Nabanita Deb, Amartya Bose, Sanjog Nagarkar, Vishal Govind Rao, Subhabrata Maity, Veerabhadrarao Kaliginedi, Debashree Ghosh, Palas Roy, Suman Chakrabarty, Kalaivanan Nagarajan, Asha Liza James (ACS Representative), Hema Chandra Kotamarthi, Pranav Shirhatti, Amrita Hazra.

From left to right (Sitting): Ravindra Venkatramani, Jayashree Nagesh, Shankar Singh (Event Manager), Sabuj Kundu, Vaibhav Prabhudesai, Anindya Datta, Jyotishman Dasgupta, G. Naresh Patwari, Sameer Sapra, Jayanta Haldar, Sayan Bagchi, Arnab Mukherjee, Chandan Jana, Harinath Chakrapani.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the partial funding provided by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Chemical Society for enabling us to host the meeting.

Full List of Participants

We are delighted to announce that Professor Niveen M. Khashab, at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, is the recipient of this year’s Cram Lehn Pedersen Prize in Supramolecular Chemistry. This prize, sponsored by ChemComm, is named in honour of the winners of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and recognises significant original and independent work in supramolecular chemistry. Please join us in celebrating Niveen’s achievement.

Niveen M. Khashab is a Professor of Chemistry at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). After her doctoral studies at the University of Florida, she joined Sir Fraser Stoddart’s Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, and then at Northwestern University working on supramolecular chemistry, programmable nanomaterials with emphasis on the encapsulation, controlled release and self-assembly of the systems. Inspired by the model of evolutionary biological systems, the Khashab research group is engaged in the design and synthesis of supramolecular assemblies at the nanoscale, employing non-covalent and coordination interactions. These systems are designed with an emphasis on hierarchical-assembly (evolution), porosity (ordered self-assembly) and stimuli-responsiveness (smart materials). As to applications: they are utilized for biomedical (encapsulation, delivery and sensing), industrial (nanocomposites and coatings) and environmental (sustainable agriculture) platforms. She is the recipient of the Crow Award in Organic Chemistry in 2004, AlMaraai Award for  Nanotechnology in 2013 and the L’Oréal-Unesco Women in Science International Award in 2017. In 2021, she was named a fellow of the Royal Chemical Society. She is on the editorial board of 10 scientific journal (ACS, RSC, Wiley) and currently serving as an associate editor at Chemistry of Materials (ACS). Follow Niveen’s lab on Twitter: @ShmsLab

Congratulations to Dong-Dong Zhou for publishing his first independent research article in ChemComm. Be sure to read Dong-Dong’s #ChemComm1st article ‘Single-crystal superprotonic conductivity in an interpenetrated hydrogen-bonded quadruplex framework‘ in our collection, ChemComm Milestones – First Independent Articles.

Find out about his experience as a first-time author in our recent interview.

What are the main areas of research in your lab and what motivated you to take this direction?

The design and syntheses of new crystalline porous materials, such as porous coordination polymers (PCPs) or metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), and we pay more attention to the influence of their dynamic behaviours on their properties of adsorptive separation, catalysis, conduction and so on. MOF materials possess the advantages of designable and modifiable structures, more importantly, the structure-activity relationship between their structures and properties can be revealed at the atomic or molecular level, which is helpful to guide the design new materials with specific performance. Moreover, MOF materials are expected to have unique properties that traditional materials cannot, such as the “intermediate-sized molecular sieves” we reported earlier in Nat. Mater.

Can you set this article in a wider context?

New crystalline porous materials based on supramolecular interactions such as coordination bonds and/or hydrogen bonds show good prospects in many application fields. However, this kind of materials is easy to dynamically change under external stimuli, which may help us to discover some new things/mechanisms, or to further understand some certain processes in nature. For example, proton dynamic behaviour’s in fuel cells and beings are closely related with their performances and life processes. In this work, we designed and synthesized a porous hydrogen-boned quadruplex framework (like G-quadruplex in the chromosome), in which there exists one-dimensional spiral water chains in the channels. We prepared their large-size single crystals and measured the anisotropic proton conductivity, which demonstrated that it showed a super protonic conductivity along the water chains. Computation simulations showed that the protons of water transfer between oxygen atoms accompanied with water molecules moving, that is proton vehicle mechanism.

What do you hope your lab can achieve in the coming year?

I hope that students in the our lab will discover “the beauty of crystals”, “the secret of dynamics” and “the rigor of science”, and quickly grow into the relevant researchers with independent thinking and judgment through scientific research training in the next year, so that they can start their own favourite and skilled scientific research fields in one day.

Describe your journey to becoming an independent researcher

During my undergraduate period, I joined Prof. Chunlin Ni group in South China Agricultural University, where I deeply felt in the power of single crystal X-ray diffraction technology and began to study the growth of single crystals. In 2011, I went to Sun Yat-Sen University for further study, and mainly carried out the researches on the design and synthesis of crystalline porous materials under the guidance of Prof. Jie-Peng Zhang, and obtained my Ph.D. degree in 2016. Then as an associate researcher, I assisted to guide graduate students and Ph.D. candidates to carry out their researches on porous materials for adsorptive separation and catalysis in the group of Prof. Xiao-Ming Chen and Jie-Peng Zhang. In 2019, I became an associate professor in Sun Yat-sen University, and began to independently guide graduate students to carry out scientific research. My research interests mainly focus on the dynamic behaviours of crystalline porous materials playing roles in the related properties.

What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given?

Maybe it is from the Zhouyi “天行健，君子以自强不息；地势坤，君子以厚德载物”, which means “As heaven maintains vigor through movements, a gentle man should constantly strive for self-perfection. As earth’s condition is receptive devotion, a gentle man should hold the outer world with broad mind”.

Why did you choose to publish in ChemComm?

Coincidentally, my first academic paper was also published in ChemComm as outside front cover, and all three papers during my Ph.D. candidate stage were published in ChemComm, which caused I was teased as “the king of ChemComm” by my friends at that time. Actually, as a chemistry researcher, we all know ChemComm is a very good chemistry journal for quick reporting of significant results with scientific value. And I’ve been focus on the papers published on ChemComm, in which a lot of good ideas also inspires me. In the future, I also hope we have more opportunities to publish my works in ChemComm.

Dr. Dong-Dong Zhou was born in China in June 1990. He received his B.Sc. degree (2011) from South China Agricultural University, and his Ph.D. degree (2016) in inorganic chemistry under the supervision of Professor Jie-Peng Zhang from Sun Yat-Sen University. Then, he became an associate researcher in Xiao-Ming Chen Group at Sun Yat-Sen University. Since 2019, he has been an associate professor in School of Chemistry at Sun Yat-Sen University. His current research interest focuses on the design and syntheses of porous coordination polymers or metal–organic frameworks, especially for their dynamic structural changes playing a role in the applications of adsorptive separation, catalysis, proton conduction etc.

Exciting news – Thanthapatra (Valentine) Bunchuay recently published his #ChemComm1st article:
Pertosylated pillar[5]arene: self-template assisted synthesis and supramolecular polymer formation. We wanted to find out about Thanthapatra’s experiences reaching a ChemComm Milestone. Find out more in our interview below.

Read about Thanthapatra and the SupraValentine group here:

What are the main areas of research in your lab and what motivated you to take this direction?
Our research in the ‘SupraValentine’ Lab at Mahidol University focuses on supramolecular and macrocyclic chemistry, which covers a broad area of interests. Learning from molecular recognition processes in nature, our lab has employed various forms of intermolecular non-covalent interactions as tools to construct supramolecular architectures. Our prime interest is the synthesis of novel macrocyclic host molecules decorated with specific functional groups to facilitate binding or encapsulation of target guest species including cations, anions, ion-pairs, and neutral molecules. These systems have been designed to self-assemble into complex nanostructures for tailored applications such as; stimuli responsive materials, smart sensors, and recovery and extraction agents. The most effective and elegant supramolecular chemistry is performed by nature and so taking inspiration from biological systems, complemented by one’s own imagination are key to my research in supramolecular chemistry. I am motivated by the idea of inspiring others to actively contribute to the exciting field of supramolecular chemistry, which is still a relatively small society in Thailand.

Can you set this article in a wider context?
Pillar[5]arenes are a class of macrocycles having a five-fold symmetric structure constructed from electron-rich aromatic surfaces. These macrocycles can encapsulate a range of guest molecules and especially electron deficient linear alkyl moieties. Usually, these are obtained by Lewis acid catalyzed macrocyclization reactions of dialkoxy benzene monomers. However, to date the synthesis of highly decorated Pillar[5]arenes has been hindered by low yields and/or tedious synthesis. In this work, we incorporated tosylate functional groups into the monomeric unit to synthesize a pertosylated pillar[5]arene structure. The discovery of a serendipitous self-templation effect facilitated the high yielding synthesis (70%) of a perfunctionalised pillar[5]arene derivative, in contrast to the previous paradigm for decafunctionalised pillararenes of this kind. The presence of ten tosylate units not only facilitates the formation of a supramolecular polymer and nanofiber in both the solid-state and solution phase, through concerted weak hydrogen bond formation, but serves as an excellent synthetic handle in the rapid construction of highly derivatisable and multivalent nano-scafffolds. We believe that these results provide great promise for the versatility of subtle, yet powerful, unorthodox non-covalent interactions in the synthesis and functionality of supramolecular systems. Considering the rich host-guest chemistry of pillararenes we hope that our contribution to the rapid and facile access of diversifiable platforms will help further propel the inherent ‘stardom’ of pillararene based materials.

What do you hope your lab can achieve in the coming year?
My lab has been set up since August 2019. Thanks to the unfailing kindness and generosity of my previous M.Sc. supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Jonggol Tantirungrotechai I have been able to kick-start my research career. Jonggol’s sharing of space and facilities were crucial to my first independent publication. In this coming year, we hope that we will discover many secrets of nature through our systems and aim to communicate our work to the chemist community (publish more articles!). Again, thanks my students and my great colleagues especially, Prof. David Harding for your effort.

Describe your journey to becoming an independent researcher.
It’s been a long journey I would say. Since grade 10 in high school, I have received a Development and Promotion of Science and Technology Talent Project (DPST) scholarship from the Thai government to study any ‘pure science’ until Ph.D. and without hesitation chose a chemistry major. I received my B.Sc. (2011) and M.Sc.(2014) from the Faculty of Science in Mahidol University, Thailand. During that time, I was allowed to explore a broad range of chemistry from iodine mediated synthetic methodology to the post-functionalisation of MOFs for catalysis. In 2014, I had a great opportunity to join the research group of Prof. Paul D. Beer at the University of Oxford. During this time, it is no exaggeration to say my life was totally changed. It was truly an honour to be under the supervision of Paul leading with uninhibited imagination, enthusiasm and encouragement, undoubtedly influencing how I pursue science in my own research group. Apart from synthetic chemistry skills, I also learnt to be patient and deal with the dynamics of a large research group. In particular, recalling the valuable discussions with Paul and other group members helping to stimulate my own research interests. Sometimes my ideas were useful and of course some were useless, but all were useful learning experiences nonetheless. In January 2019, I secured the position of inorganic lecturer at Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Thailand. Starting my own research group in August 2019 with one graduate student and two undergraduate students, 10 months later we were lucky enough to publish our first work in ChemComm.

What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given?
During my time as a D.Phil student, it was certainly the most transformative and important journey of my life. I started in the Beer group with little synthetic organic experience, so my first year was a steep (but fun) learning curve. Sometimes we succeeded, many times we failed. As Paul always says “Learn to walk before you can run”, you have to keep learning, doing chemistry, and developing yourself gradually. The day that you are strong enough, you can run and jump into whatever areas that you are not familiar with. Another invaluable piece of advice from him that I really like is “Good work can be published everywhere”, however he said this when our first paper together was rejected!

Why did you choose to publish in ChemComm?
ChemComm consistently publishes many excellent works. The journal’s universally respected reputation presented the best platform to initiate my independent scientific career. The clear paper format and straightforward submission processes were also important in my decision to submit our very first publication from the ‘SupraValentine Lab’. Many thanks to the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and ChemComm again for this great opportunity to support early career researchers from wherever they are in the world. This experience has encouraged me and I hope it will inspire others to continue producing good science.

Thanthapatra (Valentine) Bunchuay, a recipient of the Royal Thai Scholarship (2004 – 2018), graduated from Mahidol University (Thailand) with a first class honour B.Sc. degree in 2011. After that, he carried on the research with Associate Professor Jonggol Tantirungrotechai in the functionalisation of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) for heterogeneous catalysis applications, graduating with an M.Sc. degree in chemistry in 2014. In the same year, he moved to the United Kingdom to join the group of Professor Paul Beer at the University of Oxford, where he developed sigma-hole donor host molecules for anion and ion-pair recognition in aqueous media. Having finished his D.Phil. degree in 2018, he is now working as an inorganic chemistry lecturer at Mahidol University where he has started The SupraValentine Research Lab. His research focuses on applications of supramolecular host-guest chemistry in functional materials and nanostructures.

Our collection of #ChemComm1st articles, including Thanthapatra’s, are available here. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for the latest #ChemCommMilestones news.

Our world runs on systems of ever-increasing complexity, be they natural or human created. Their behavior can generally be modeled and operates within a normal range… until it hits a tipping point at a border between two behavioral regimes. Once that threshold is reached the system acts in dramatically different, and often destructive, ways. However, there are often warning signs right around the tipping point that can serve to alert careful observers that the danger zone is near. By finding ways to identify and monitor this behavior either contingency plans can be put in place or the problem corrected before it becomes catastrophic. While much of this has been studied for large systems like the stock market or ecosystems, researchers recently applied this to chemical systems.

The utility of identifying early warning signals isn’t limited to preventing massive changes; it can also help bound regions of different functionality in chemical systems. To explore this, researchers used a trypsin oscillator system they previously developed that has two modes of flow (Figure 1), either sustained oscillations in trypsin concentration or dampened oscillations that eventually lead to a steady concentration of trypsin. By changing flow rate, temperature, or reagent concentration the researchers could tune the behavior of the system to test either active or passive monitoring schemes to find early warning signs. Since they knew what conditions produced each mode, they could operate the system right at the boundary and watch its behavior.

Figure 1. Schematic of trypsin system with examples of oscillation patterns.

In the “active” experiments the researchers intervened in the system’s normal functioning and watched how its response, the “critical slow down phenomena,” changed as the conditions were brought closer to the boundary. In “passive” experiments, the researchers simply brought the system close to the boundary and monitored the shape of the oscillation waves focusing on their full-width half maxima (FWHM). In the series of active sensing experiments, the researchers waited to see how long it took the system to re-establish sustained oscillations after a change in temperature. They expected to see this recovery time increase as the system was brought closer to the edge, aka the “critical slow down phenomena.” In their experiment they elevated the temperature of the system to 49.0 ^oC and observed how long it took to recover to either 24.3 ^oC (well within the sustained regime) or 20.9 ^oC (near the behavioral boundary). They saw the expected dramatic increase in time to return to sustained oscillation, with the system recovering in 10.7 hrs at 24.3 ^oC, but taking three times as long, 32.8 hrs, when the final temperature was 20.9 ^oC (Figure 2). The experimental results were further validated by theoretical modeling, where experimentally challenging positions at the very edge of the boundary could be explored and showed the same general behavior.

Figure 2. Top: active monitoring experiments at two different temperatures showing the differences in time needed to recover sustained oscillations. Bottom: comparison of modeled and experimental recovery times.

The theoretical modeling was further used to create a map of passive monitoring space, looking at the variations in FWHM. They saw that as the system moves away from the center of the oscillation regime the FWHM increases as the peaks broaden. This becomes more pronounced as the conditions approach the behavioral boundary. This provides a baseline knowledge with multiple types of measurements to compare the stability of the simple system over a range of conditions. Additionally, this system and others like it can serve as the base for modeling more complex systems of which they are a part.

To find out more, please read:

Early warning signals in chemical reaction networks

Chem. Commun., 2020, Advance Article

Oliver R. Maguire, Albert S. Y. Wong, Jan Harm Westerdiep and Wilhelm T. S. Huck

About the blogger:

Dr. Beth Mundy recently received her PhD in chemistry from the Cossairt lab at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Her research focused on developing new and better ways to synthesize nanomaterials for energy applications. She is often spotted knitting in seminars or with her nose in a good book. You can find her on Twitter at @BethMundySci.

The International Committee of the International Symposium on Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry is pleased to invite nominations for the Cram Lehn Pedersen Prize for young supramolecular chemists.

The Cram Lehn Pedersen Prize, named in honor of the winners of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, will recognise significant original and independent work in supramolecular chemistry.

Those who were awarded their PhD on or after 1^st January 2009 (or who have an award of PhD date together with allowable career interruptions* that would be commensurate with award of their PhD on or after 1^st January 2009) are eligible for the 2020 award. The winner will receive a prize of £2000 and free registration for the ISMSC meeting in Sydney, Australia. In addition to giving a lecture at ISMSC, a short lecture tour will be organized after the meeting in consultation with the Editor of Chemical Communications, the sponsor of the award.

Nomination Details

You may nominate yourself, but a nomination letter is recommended. Nomination materials should include: CV, list of publications (divided into publications from your PhD and post-doc, and those from your independent work), and be sent to Prof. Roger Harrison (ISMSC Secretary) at roger_harrison@byu.edu by 31st December 2019.

*Allowable career interruptions include primary caregiver’s responsibilities, illness, disability or parental leave and must be outlined in a cover letter with supporting documentation. See  https://www.chem.byu.edu/faculty-and-staff/resources/international-symposium-on-macrocyclic-and-supramolecular-chemistry/awards/ for specific details.

Be sure to read our latest Editor’s Choice article as chosen by Associate Editor Jean-Louis Reymond!

This article is free-to-access until 8th November and can be found alongside our previously chosen articles in our online Editor’s Choice web-collection!

“Heptylmannose-functionalized cellulose for the binding and specific detection of pathogenic E. coli” by Sébastien G. Gouin et al. as chosen by Jean-Louis Reymond:

In their communication “Heptylmannose-functionalized cellulose for the binding and specific detection of pathogenic E. coli” Madeleine Cauwel et al. exploited the well-known FimH lectin system to devise a selective detection system for adherent-invasive E. coli (AIEC) involved in the pathogenesis of Crohn’s disease (CD). FimH is well known to bind mannosyl glycosides and to occur in AIEC. The trick here was to prepare a modified cellulose (as nanofiber or paper) using click chemistry, profile its lectin binding with state-of-the art chip analysis, verify its ability to block binding of AIEC from a CD patient to intestinal epithelial cells and to decrease AIEC levels in gut microbiota in a murine model, and finally to show that the modified paper binds selectively to pathogenic AIEC but not to benign E. coli.

Simple but effective chemistry, thorough experiments with relevant samples, impressive results. Chemical biology at its best.

Find our full Editor’s Choice collection online!

Keep up-to-date with our latest journal news on Twitter @ChemCommun or via our blog!

Learn more about ChemComm online! Submit your latest high impact research here!