Archive for March, 2013

Nucleic Acids: new life, new materials – web themed issue now published!

Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, ChemComm and RSC Advances are delighted to announce the publication of a timely web collection on:

Nucleic Acids: new life, new materials

Guest-edited by:

Michael Gait (MRC, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK) Nadrian Seeman (New York University, USA)
Makoto Komiyama (University of Tsukuba, Japan) Oliver Seitz (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany)
David Liu (Harvard University, USA) Jason Mickelfield (University of Manchester, UK)

Through over 70 communications, full papers, feature articles and perspectives, this collection guides the reader through the most recent and exciting findings in nucleic acids research and applications in emerging areas.

Some of the work presented in this virtual collection is also dedicated to the memory of Professor Har Gobind Khorana (1922 – 2011) and Dr Daniel McGillivray Brown (1923 – 2012) acknowledging their legacy to the nucleic acids community.

“The ingenuity of nucleic acids chemists is formidable, particularly in the newly emerging areas involving DNA architecture combined with novel chemical modifications and material composites. This web collection nicely showcases this potential.”
Read this and more in the guest-editors’ Editorial for the issue.

As a taster, this collection of articles includes:

Pyridostatin analogues promote telomere dysfunction and long-term growth inhibition in human cancer cells
Sebastian Müller, Deborah A. Sanders, Marco Di Antonio, Stephanos Matsis, Jean-François Riou, Raphaël Rodriguez and Shankar Balasubramanian
Org. Biomol. Chem., DOI: 10.1039/C2OB25830G, Paper

A clocked finite state machine built from DNA
Cristina Costa Santini, Jonathan Bath, Andy M. Tyrrell and Andrew J. Turberfield
Chem. Commun., DOI: 10.1039/C2CC37227D

Theoretical model of substrate-assisted self-assembly of DNA nanostructures
Shogo Hamada and Satoshi Murata
RSC Adv., DOI: 10.1039/C2RA20764H

Reduction of metal ions by boranephosphonate DNA
Subhadeep Roy, Magdalena Olesiak, Petra Padar, Heather McCuen and Marvin H. Caruthers
Org. Biomol. Chem., DOI: 10.1039/C2OB26661J

Dehydration from conserved stem regions is fundamental for ligand-dependent conformational transition of the adenine-specific riboswitch
Vinit Kumar, Tamaki Endoh, Kentaro Murakami and Naoki Sugimoto
Chem. Commun., DOI: 10.1039/C2CC34506D

DNA glycoclusters and DNA-based carbohydrate microarrays: From design to applications
François Morvan, Sébastien Vidal, Eliane Souteyrand, Yann Chevolot and Jean-Jacques Vasseur
RSC Adv., DOI: 10.1039/C2RA21550K

The bacterial second messenger c-di-GMP: probing interactions with protein and RNA binding partners using cyclic dinucleotide analogs
Carly A. Shanahan and Scott A. Strobel
Org. Biomol. Chem., DOI: 10.1039/C2OB26724A

A DNA based five-state switch with programmed reversibility
Jonathan R. Burns, Søren Preus, Daniel G. Singleton and Eugen Stulz
Chem. Commun., DOI: 10.1039/C2CC35799B

Two-photon excitation of the fluorescent nucleobase analogues 2-AP and tC
R. S. K. Lane and S. W. Magennis
RSC Adv., DOI: 10.1039/C2RA21881J

…and many more.

We hope that you will find this collection enjoyable and stimulating to read!

Please feel free to send the link to the issue to other researchers who you think may be interested.

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Professor Mike Ward welcomes the RSC Advances Advisory Board

Professor Mike Ward, Chair of the RSC Advances Editorial Board, welcomes the new Advisory Board to the Journal.

RSC Advances is delighted to announce the appointment of a 25-strong Advisory Board.  It consists of distinguished academics from all over the world whose collective work, in keeping with the broad scope of the Journal, covers all areas of the chemical sciences with an emphasis on interdiscplinary and emerging areas.  As the Journal goes from strength to strength – passing 2000 published articles and moving from monthly to weekly publication in just a year and a half after starting – the Editorial Board members and publishing team look forward to working with our Advisory Board members in helping to promote the Journal around the world, to improve the content even further, and to ensure that RSC Advances remains at the forefront of chemistry publishing.”

Ayyappanpillai Ajayaghosh
National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, India
Ali Khademhosseini
Harvard Medical School, USA
Bruce Arndtsen
McGill University, Canada
Jinghong Li
Tsinghua University, China
Vanderlan da Silva Bolzani
Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), Brazil
Kenneth Lo
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Sally Brooker
University of Otago, New Zealand
Hiromi Nakai
Waseda University, Japan
S. Chandrasekhar
Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, India
Colin Raston
Flinders University, Australia
Yougtae Chang
National University of Singapore, Singapore
John Roberts
Caltech, USA
Hui-Ming Cheng
Shenyang National Laboratory, China
Siddhartha Roy
Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, India
Kilwon Cho
Pohang University of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea
Magnus Rueping
RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Andrew deMello
ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Bradley D. Smith
University of Notre Dame, USA
Koichi Eguchi
Kyoto University, Japan
Roman Surmenev
Tomsk Polytechnic University, Russia
Teruo Fujii
University of Tokyo, Japan
Nico Völcker
University of South Australia, Australia
Stefan Grimme
University of Bonn, Germany
Christoph Weder
University of Freibourg, Switzerland
Malcolm Halcrow
University of Leeds, UK
Chunhua Yan
Peking University, China

Stay up-to-date with the latest content in RSC Advances by registering for our free newsletter and table of contents alerts.

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Top 10 most accessed articles in 2012

Do you want to know what your colleagues were reading during 2012?  The following articles in RSC Advances were the most accessed over the course of the year:

Graphene–inorganic nanocomposites
Song Bai and Xiaoping Shen
RSC Adv., 2012,2, 64-98
DOI: 10.1039/C1RA00260K, Review Article

Graphene oxide and its reduction: modeling and experimental progress
Shun Mao, Haihui Pu and Junhong Chen
RSC Adv., 2012,2, 2643-2662
DOI: 10.1039/C2RA00663D, Review Article

Graphene-based photocatalytic composites
Xiaoqiang An and Jimmy C. Yu
RSC Adv., 2011,1, 1426-1434
DOI: 10.1039/C1RA00382H, Review Article

Recent developments in solvent-free multicomponent reactions: a perfect synergy for eco-compatible organic synthesis
Maya Shankar Singh and Sushobhan Chowdhury
RSC Adv., 2012,2, 4547-4592
DOI: 10.1039/C2RA01056A, Review Article

Graphene quantum dots with controllable surface oxidation, tunable fluorescence and up-conversion emission
Shoujun Zhu, Junhu Zhang, Xue Liu, Bo Li, Xingfeng Wang, Shijia Tang, Qingnan Meng, Yunfeng Li, Ce Shi, Rui Hu and Bai Yang
RSC Adv., 2012,2, 2717-2720
DOI: 10.1039/C2RA20182H, Communication

Cucurbituril chemistry: a tale of supramolecular success
Eric Masson, Xiaoxi Ling, Roymon Joseph, Lawrence Kyeremeh-Mensah and Xiaoyong Lu
RSC Adv., 2012,2, 1213-1247
DOI: 10.1039/C1RA00768H, Review Article

Homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts for multicomponent reactions
Maria José Climent, Avelino Corma and Sara Iborra
RSC Adv., 2012,2, 16-58
DOI: 10.1039/C1RA00807B, Review Article

Synthesis of graphene-based nanomaterials and their application in energy-related and environmental-related areas
Guixia Zhao, Tao Wen, Changlun Chen and Xiangke Wang
RSC Adv., 2012,2, 9286-9303
DOI: 10.1039/C2RA20990J, Review Article

Hybrid structure of zinc oxide nanorods and three dimensional graphene foam for supercapacitor and electrochemical sensor applications
Xiaochen Dong, Yunfa Cao, Jing Wang, Mary B. Chan-Park, Lianhui Wang, Wei Huang and Peng Chen
RSC Adv., 2012,2, 4364-4369
DOI: 10.1039/C2RA01295B, Paper

Synthesis of WO3@Graphene composite for enhanced photocatalytic oxygen evolution from water
Jingjing Guo, Yao Li, Shenmin Zhu, Zhixin Chen, Qinglei Liu, Di Zhang, Won-Jin Moon and Deok-Min Song
RSC Adv., 2012,2, 1356-1363
DOI: 10.1039/C1RA00621E, Paper

Take a look at the articles and then post your thoughts and comments below.

Interested in submitting your own work to RSC Advances? Submit online today, or email us with your suggestions.

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Flexible ligand secret to solvent-free success

Steven P. Nolan’s group at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, UK, have reported a new solvent-free protocol for carrying out Buchwald-Hartwig aminations, an important class of reactions, for unactivated aryl chlorides using a palladium pre-catalyst. The reaction proceeds to complete conversion in around five minutes when initiated at room temperature, compared to zero conversion when using a solvent (DME). The secret to their success appears to be the use of a bulky yet flexible ligand, IPr*, in the pre-catalyst.

A highly effective solvent-free protocol for the Buchwald–Hartwig amination of unactivated aryl chlorides by palladium pre catalyst

The reaction requires 1 mol% of the [Pd(NHC)] pre-catalyst – halving the amount of catalyst halved the conversion rate. An exotherm was observed in many cases: the reaction self-heated to 80ºC for a few seconds, therefore the group concludes that the protocol could be dangerous if carried out at a large scale. Interestingly the coupling could also be carried out with a solid substrate, leading to conversion of 73% after 24h, with no observed exotherm but a longer reaction time.

To learn more about this intriguing class of reactions, read the original article in RSC Advances:

Solvent-free aryl amination catalysed by [Pd(NHC)] Complexes, Anthony Chartoire, Arnaud Boreux, Anthony R. Martin and Steven P. Nolan, RSC Adv., 2013, 3, 3840–3843

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