Chemical Society Reviews Blog

Synthesising compounds asymmetrically has obvious advantages – scientists don’t have to go through the laborious and wasteful process of separating then discarding the ‘wrong’ enantiomer. Huge libraries of compounds can be tested for their ability to catalyse a reaction of interest but determining the enantiomeric excess (ee) of the products is a bottleneck in the process.

So researchers have been developing high-throughput ee screening methods that can analyse samples as quickly as they are generated, ideally at a rate of a thousand or more per day.

Eric Anslyn and colleagues explore this topic in their Chem Soc Rev critical review, specifically focusing on optical methods. Download the review to find out about the advantages and drawbacks of a variety of techniques.

Also of interest:
Discrimination of flavonoids and red wine varietals by arrays of differential peptidic sensors
Alona P. Umali, Sarah E. LeBoeuf, Robert W. Newberry, Siwon Kim, Lee Tran, Whitney A. Rome, Tian Tian, David Taing, Jane Hong, Melissa Kwan, Hildegarde Heymann and Eric V. Anslyn, Chem. Sci., 2011, 2, 439-445

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed a subtle change to the Chem Soc Rev homepage. Can you spot it?

Well, Chem Soc Rev will be doubly good next year as we’ll be moving to 24 issues.

So if you are subscribed to our e-alert, you’ll get two notifications per month about the latest topical reviews we’ve published. And if you read the print issues, you’ll find it a bit easier on the biceps when lifting them – there shouldn’t be any with more than 1000 pages like issue 5 this year.

If you have any suggestions for the journal, such as review topics or themed issue ideas, we’d love to hear them. Please contact us or leave your comments below.

Gold – people lust after it, buy things with it and decorate objects and themselves with it. But what many people don’t know is that gold can also help to cure cancer.

Gold nanoparticles have a combination of properties, different from bulk gold, which enable them to act as potent, selective and multifunctional anti-cancer agents. They can be used in photothermal cancer therapy, drug delivery, gene therapy and cell cycle regulation. 

In their Chem Soc Rev tutorial review, Mostafa El-Sayed and colleagues from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA, discuss these anti-cancer applications as well as strategies for the synthesis/design of biomedical gold nanoparticle conjugates.

Also of interest:
Gold – Chemistry, materials and catalysis: A Chem Soc Rev themed issue
Gold 100 Article Collection: 100 articles freely available thanks to the generous sponsorship of the World Gold Council

Last night I bumped into one of my Chem Soc Rev colleagues, Bryan (Publishing Editor), at a charity wine tasting event – not literally: I didn’t have that much wine.

It was a really enjoyable evening. Not only was there nice wine and nibbles, there were also quite a lot of science-y facts.

Some things I learned:

• Wine has legs but they don’t necessarily indicate high alcohol content.
• Wine changes colour as it ages due to oxidation. Both red and white wine eventually turn the colour of onion skin, according to the wine expert.
• Terroir is the ‘sense of place’ the wine has, influenced by the geography, geology and climate of the place it was produced.
• Wines with higher sugar and acidity content keep for longer.

If you like a drop yourself and fancy learning more about the science behind the wine, check out these articles:

Recent advances in the science of champagne bubbles
Gérard Liger-Belair, Guillaume Polidori and Philippe Jeandet, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2008, 37, 2490-2511

Wine flavor: chemistry in a glass
Pavla Polášková, Julian Herszage and Susan E. Ebeler, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2008, 37, 2478-2489 

Discrimination of flavonoids and red wine varietals by arrays of differential peptidic sensors
Alona P. Umali, Sarah E. LeBoeuf, Robert W. Newberry, Siwon Kim, Lee Tran, Whitney A. Rome, Tian Tian, David Taing, Jane Hong, Melissa Kwan, Hildegarde Heymann and Eric V. Anslyn, Chem. Sci., 2011, 2, 439-445

The impact of flavonoids on memory: physiological and molecular considerations
Jeremy P. E. Spencer, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2009, 38, 1152-1161

Also of interest:
Chemistry and Biology of Winemaking: an RSC book ideal for anyone interested in the process of winemaking