Volume 7 Issue 11, November 2023

A review of Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death, where Nick Lane explores the Krebs cycle, a metabolic pathway that is central to biochemistry.

Michael DeGrandpre explains the development and workings of a submersible autonomous moored instrument for alkalinity measurements in marine and freshwater environments.

In the interstellar medium, complex organic molecules are believed to form on icy dust grains in dark molecular clouds. Research now shows that carbon atoms, previously considered immobile, can diffuse across ice surfaces to take part in reactions with other adsorbed species.

Free energy calculations have great potential to accelerate drug discovery projects by predicting relative protein–ligand binding affinities. But how accurate are these predictions and how accurate can they become? A recent report assesses the state of the art in such calculations and compares it to experimental approaches.

Heterogeneous single-cluster catalysts comprising atomically precise metal clusters stabilized on supports offer exciting prospects for delivering novel reactivity patterns in chemical transformations. This Review examines the progress in controlling cluster environments and understanding the performance of single-cluster catalysts.

This Review compares the macrocycle-based host–guest chemistry in solution and in the solid state and illustrates related physical chemistry laws. Recent progress about applications of solid-state host–guest chemistry in the fields of adsorption, separation, optical materials and stimuli-responsive systems is also discussed.

Strategies that utilize the oxidation of unactivated C–H bonds are becoming increasingly popular in natural product total synthesis. This Review classifies and highlights the different strategic use-cases of oxidation reactions as they were applied in recent total syntheses.

This Review focuses on the inherent advantages of natural resources for room-temperature phosphorescent (RTP) materials, mechanisms and strategies for activating and enhancing the RTP properties of natural resources, as well as the potential applications of these RTP materials.