In this NJC Hot Article, Lajos Kovács and colleagues consider the aggregation of 3-methylxanthine via experimental and theoretical approaches and show the formation of quartet sytems, revealing that 3-substituted xanthines could be a previously undescribed quadruplex-forming base.

3-Substituted xanthines as promising candidates for quadruplex formation: computational, synthetic and analytical studies, János Szolomájer, Gábor Paragi, Gyula Batta, Célia Fonseca Guerra, F. Matthias Bickelhaupt, Zoltán Kele, Petra Pádár, Zoltán Kupihár and Lajos Kovács, New J. Chem., 2011, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C0NJ00612B, Paper

Curious? Why not read all about it here. This NJC paper has been rated as ‘hot’ and is FREE to access to all for a period of four weeks, after a simple registration process at: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/account/register. Let us know your thoughts and comments below!

In this hot article, Jonathan S. Lindsey and colleagues have looked at the hypothetical pre-biotic synthesis of tetrapyrroles and designed an enzyme free synthesis of nature’s universal precursor to the ‘pigments of life’ (corrins, heme, chlorophylls), in which the abiotic reaction under mild conditions of δ-aminolevulinic acid and the dione shown gives uroporphyrinogen.

Abiotic formation of uroporphyrinogen and coproporphyrinogen from acyclic reactants, Jonathan S. Lindsey, Vanampally Chandrashaker, Masahiko Taniguchi and Marcin Ptaszek, New J. Chem., 2011, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C0NJ00716A, Paper

Curious about porphyrinoids, prebiotic chemistry and the origins of life? Then why not read the article for free until 7th January 2011 and let us know your thoughts and comments below.

In this NJC Letter, Farrusseng and coworkers report on the guest-induced reversible gate-opening of a zeolite imidazolate framework (ZIF-7 and ZIF-8) and explore in detail the thermodynamics beyond these phenomena. This Letter was highly rated by the reviewers and selected as a Hot article by the editors, offering FREE access to the article for a period of 4 weeks.

Guest-induced gate-opening of a zeolite imidazolate framework, Sonia Aguado, Gérard Bergeret, Marc Pera Titus, Virginie Moizan, Carlos Nieto-Draghi, Nicolas Bats and David Farrusseng, New J. Chem., 2011, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C0NJ00836B, Letter

Interested to know more? Why not download and read the article today! It’s recently been published in NJC and will be freely available to all, until early January 2011