Chemical Communications Blog

In celebration of Peer Review Week, with the theme of Recognition for Review, we would like to highlight the top 10 reviewers for ChemComm in 2016, as selected by the editor for their significant contribution to the journal.

Top 10 Reviewers for ChemComm:
– Dr Xuehai Yan – Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany
– Dr Yong Wang – Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center, USA
– Dr Cheng Wang – Xiamen University, China
– Dr Tieru Zhang – Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, China
– Dr Jie Wu – National University of Singapore, Singapore
– Dr Guocan Yu – Zhejiang University, China
– Dr Xiangbing Qi – National Institute of Biological Science Beijing, China
– Dr Yong Li – University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA
– Dr Youjun Yang – East China University of Science and Technology, China
– Professor Martin Albrecht – University of Bern, Switzerland

We would like to say a massive thank you to these reviewers as well as the ChemComm board and all of the chemistry community for their continued support of the journal, as authors, reviewers and readers.

Two separate groups of scientists have developed methods to uncover proteins’ 3D structure inside living animal cells for the first time.

It is vital to know the structure of a protein to understand its chemical and biological functions. Scientists usually need to purify and crystallise a protein to determine its 3D structure by x-ray crystallography. Not only is this process difficult and lengthy, it can also misrepresent the protein’s structure, as the measuring conditions are vastly different from the conditions inside a living cell.

Now, a researcher team led by Xun-Cheng Su from Nankai University in Tianjin, China,Conggang Li at Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Thomas Huber from the Australian National University, has analysed a protein’s structure using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy inside living frog cells.1 The researchers tagged the protein with a beacon, a paramagnetic lanthanide tag, which binds to a cysteine residue on the outside of the protein. ‘The measured effects from the beacons tagged onto the protein give away the positions of the atoms in the protein, in a similar way that a set of satellites can be used to locate the exact position of a GPS receiver,’ Su explains.

Read the full article on Chemistry World >>>

A team of scientists has discovered the first interactions between neon and a transition metal. Their discovery opens up the possibility of new methods to capture the inert gas, as well as other unreactive elements such as helium.

Although it’s found in advertising and eye-catching signage, neon is also incorporated into lasers used in the photolithographic printing of semiconductors. Neon is abundant in the universe, but its inert nature means that it escapes the Earth’s atmosphere. The noble gas is also hard to isolate. Current methods involve liquefying air and distilling the gas in a liquid form – an expensive and inefficient approach.

A team led by Peter Wood at the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre, UK, has discovered that, under particular conditions, the inert gas interacts with a transition metal. Not only is this the first interaction ever observed, but it may kick-start new approaches in capturing unreactive noble gases.

Read the full article in Chemistry World >>>

Chemists mask amines’ unwanted reactivity with carbon dioxide and overcome limitations of amide formation

Chemists at Imperial College London, UK, have overcome limitations that afflict a specific class of amidation reactions, used to produce a range of compounds from drugs to valuable materials. Their simple trick was to add carbon dioxide, which masks the reagent’s reactivity, making sure it only reacts when they want it to.

Read the full article in Chemistry World >>>

Special issue by Royal Society Publishing

Royal Society Publishing has recently published a special issue of Philosophical Transactions A entitled “Fullerenes: past, present and future, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Buckminsterfullerene“.

The discovery of C60 and the subsequent evolution of fullerene physics and chemistry can be seen as the culmination of a series of parallel research strands pursued by Harry Kroto through numerous collaborations with colleagues and co-workers.

This themed issue originates from the 2-day symposium held on 15–16 July 2015, organized by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Royal Society. The majority of the reviews and reports of original research were provided by scientists who gave presentations at the July 2015 meeting and the other contributions were produced by friends and co-workers of Harry.

This issue is free to access until the end of September:

Introduction:

Fullerenes: past, present and future, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Buckminsterfullerene
Anthony J. Stace, Paul O’Brien

Dedication:

Professor Sir Harry Kroto (1939–2016)
Dave Garner

Articles:

– Pathway to the identification of C₆₀⁺ in diffuse interstellar clouds
John P. Maier, Ewen K. Campbell

– Fullerene ion chemistry: a journey of discovery and achievement
Diethard K. Böhme

– Super-atom molecular orbital excited states of fullerenes
J. Olof Johansson, Elvira Bohl, Eleanor E. B. Campbell

– Another big discovery—metallofullerenes
Hisanori Shinohara

– Fullerene and nanotube growth: new insights using first principles and molecular dynamics
Rodolfo Cruz-Silva, Takumi Araki, Takuya Hayashi, Humberto Terrones, Mauricio Terrones, Morinobu Endo

– Unconventional high-T_c superconductivity in fullerides
Yasuhiro Takabayashi, Kosmas Prassides

– The influence hydrogen atom addition has on charge switching during motion of the metal atom in endohedral Ca@C₆₀H₄ isomers
G. Raggi, E. Besley, A. J. Stace

– Ab initio infrared vibrational modes for neutral and charged small fullerenes (C₂₀, C₂₄, C₂₆, C₂₈, C₃₀ and C₆₀)
Jean-Joseph Adjizian, Alexis Vlandas, Jeremy Rio, Jean-Christophe Charlier, Chris P. Ewels

– The Stone–Wales transformation: from fullerenes to graphite, from radiation damage to heat capacity
M. I. Heggie, G. L. Haffenden, C. D. Latham, T. Trevethan

– Two-dimensional inorganic analogues of graphene: transition metal dichalcogenides
Manoj K. Jana, C. N. R. Rao

We hope you enjoy reading this collection.