Time is running out to submit your oral abstracts for two ISACS meetings taking place in 2011.
Submit by 21st January 2011 for the opportunity to give an oral presentation at:
ISACS4 – Challenges in Renewable Energy (MIT, Boston, USA) and ISACS5 – Challenges in Chemical Biology (University of Manchester, UK).
For more information, visit the ISACS website.
US chemists have developed a new highly stereoselective route to a natural product with potent anticancer properties.
David MacMillan and colleagues at Princeton University made the structurally challenging diazonamide A by exploiting three different types of catalysis – Lewis acid, transition metal and organocatalysis – in the key steps.
The principal challenge was stereoselectively installing the C(10) quaternary carbon stereocentre, explains MacMillan, as this aspect of the structure had not been successfully addressed in any of the three completed total syntheses. Using asymmetric iminium catalysis, the team efficiently synthesised the furanindoline core and C(10) centre with high stereoselectivity, which they believe is the most complex and challenging setting in which organocatalysis has been employed to date.
Find out more by downloading MacMillan’s Chemical Science Edge article.
Researchers from the Biophotonics Research Unit of Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, in collaboration with scientists from the University of Strathclyde and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, have published results of their exploration into surface enhanced spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SESORS) imaging, a new technique combining surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) with spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS).
They achieved, for the first time, imaging of SERS signals recovered from a depth of 20 mm in tissues, opening the way for sampling a number of disease conditions in the same organ at the same time. This could potentially lead to a new methodology for enhanced personalised treatment plans to be developed in realtime.
The Chemical Science Edge article has been highlighted in the following RSC press release:
“UK scientists have explored surface enhanced spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SESORS) imaging and found that multiplexed surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) signals have been recovered non-invasively from a depth of 20 mm in tissues for the first time and reconstructed to produce a false colour image. This approach could be adapted into a clinical setting for disease diagnosis, say the researchers.
The team injected four unique ‘flavours’ of SERS nanoparticles (NPs) into a 20 x 50 x 50 mm porcine tissue block at the corners of a 10 mm square. A transmission Raman data cube was acquired over an 11 x 11 pixel grid made up of 2 mm steps. The signals were reconstructed using the unique peak intensities of each nanoparticle. A false colour image of the relative signal levels was produced, demonstrating the capability of multiplexed imaging of SERS nanoparticles using deep Raman spectroscopy.
A secondary but no less significant achievement was to demonstrate that Raman signals from SERS nanoparticles can be recovered non-invasively from samples 45–50 mm thick. This is a significant step forward in the ability to detect and identify vibrational fingerprints within tissue, say the team.
The prospects for SESORS as a medical tool are significant, say the researchers. There are numerous applications where this approach could have a major impact on rapid specific diagnosis, patient specific treatment selection and treatment monitoring. However, the greatest hurdle will be introducing nanoparticles into the body without fully understanding their excretion mechanism or long term accumulation sites and whether this is likely to have detrimental effects.”
Reference:
N Stone, M Kerssens, G R Lloyd, K Faulds, D Graham and P Matousek, Chem. Sci., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/c0sc00570c
Professor Wonwoo Nam is now welcoming submissions in the area of bioinorganic chemistry
I am pleased to announce the appointment of a new Chemical Science Associate Editor: Professor Wonwoo Nam from the Department of Bioinspired Science at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea. His research focuses on bioinorganic chemistry, including understanding the roles of metal ions in biological systems and biomimetic oxidation reactions.
Professor Nam’s editorial office is now open for submissions in the area of bioinorganic chemistry. We look forward to working with him and welcome him to his new role.
Jonathan Nitschke describes the inspiration behind his work on container capsules in Chemical Science’s latest audio file
UK chemists have created a new class of container molecules that can incorporate different functional groups on their exterior surface, much like a cell displays different biomolecules on its surface.
Jonathan Nitschke and colleagues at the University of Cambridge used subcomponent self-assembly to make tetrahedral metal-organic capsules with twelve exchangeable aniline residues at the vertices of the cage. The modular construction allows their exteriors to be tailored to suit a given environment and reconfigured in response to external stimuli, explains Nitschke. The capsules bind guest species with great selectivity, he adds.
Nitschke talks about this study and his ideas for future work in the latest Chemical Science audio file, which accompanies his Edge article.
For more information about container molecules, read Nitschke’s Chemical Science Mini review and his ChemComm communication, part of the ChemComm Emerging Investigators issue.
Hawaiian shirts and baseball caps galore as editors and leading scientists gather to celebrate Chemical Science’s successful first six months
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Were you there? Did you get a hot-off-the-press copy of Chemical Science Issue 1, 2011, or a much coveted Chemical Science baseball cap? Let us know your feedback below.
To play a part of the journal’s success in 2011, submit to Chemical Science today.
Photos reproduced with the permission of ACES XP
Here in the UK we’ve been enduring the coldest start to winter since 1976. Thankfully, we published a great selection of hot Edge articles last month. As per all Chemical Science articles, they are free to access until the end of 2011.
Enjoy!
A ‘hole’ lot of mobility: Chi-Ming Che and colleagues report single crystal organoplatinum complexes with high charge mobility
Fingerprinting red wine: Eric Anslyn and colleagues have developed a sensor that can discriminate between different tannins and fingerprint a wide variety of red wines
Dinitrogen complexation with main group radicals: Spectroscopic evidence for weak but distinct interactions between several main group element radicals and physically dissolved dinitrogen in solution
New class of organic acceptors: A family of push–pull chromophores with a [4]dendralene backbone and a remarkably high propensity for reversible electron uptake
Carbene catalysts for group transfer: Gregory Hillhouse discusses the synthesis and carbene transfer reactivity of dimeric nickel bridging-carbene complexes
Building complex oxides layer-by-layer: Matthew Rosseinsky and colleagues exploit the capabilities of modern thin film deposition to grow an artificial metastable oxide
Carbenoids’ role in silver catalysis: Silver(I)-catalysed reactions of vinyldiazoacetates involve the intermediacy of silver-carbenoid species
Submit your own hot research to Chemical Science today.
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Nanoporous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) loaded with silver can serve as templates for ordered nanostructures, say US scientists.
Mark Allendorf, at Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, and colleagues impregnated a MOF with silver then exposed the MOF to an electron beam. The beam broke down the template, leading to silver coalescence and the formation of ordered silver nanostructures.
The method forms either silver nanoparticles or nanowires depending on the MOF’s structure and the extent of silver loading, explains Allendorf.
Although the synthesis of silver nanowires and nanoparticles have been previously reported, this new route can generate structures with diameters less than 10 nanometres, which has previously been very challenging.
Allendorf’s Chemical Science Edge article is available to download for free.
Be seen with the best and submit to Chemical Science today.
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A helical framework around an electrophilic centre is an effective control element for the stereoselective addition of nucleophiles, according to European scientists.
Stereoselective additions of nucleophiles to trivant carbon atoms are common organic reactions. Chemists often rely on stereogenic elements close to the reactive centres to influence the stereochemical outcome. For example, nucleophiles can preferentially add to one of the two diastereotopic faces of a carbenium ion when there is an α-stereocentre.
Now Jérome Lacour, at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and colleagues have shown that nucleophiles can also distinguish between the diastereotopic faces of chiral cationic helicenes. Using hydride and organolithium reagents, the group achieved diastereomeric ratios higher than 49:1.
More information can be found in Professor Lacour’s Edge article.
Metal-free polymers have the potential to replace toxic metal catalysts in hydrocarbon oxidation reactions, according to an international team of chemists.
Yong Wang, at the Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany, and colleagues replaced some of the carbon atoms in graphitic carbon nitride with boron. The resulting polymeric material was better than previous biomimetic homogeneous oxidation catalysts at oxidising substituted aromatics.
Oxidations of sp3 hybridised C-H bonds are challenging because the oxidised products are more reactive than the starting materials and so they tend to over-oxidise. This was not a problem for Wang’s catalyst, which was highly selective at forming ketones or aldehydes.
For more information, download Wang’s Edge article for free.
