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Volume 7 Issue 5, May 2023

Silk is synonymous with luxury, but silk-chemistry extends beyond textiles. This cover image details the structure of silk fibroin polymer chains, which are extracted from silkworm cocoons, and consists of neatly folded crystalline domains connected by amorphous coils. Silk fibroin can be functionalised by carboxylation and coupling reactions to fine-tune its physicochemical properties. Crosslinking reactions facilitate network formation in composite biomaterials. The applications of silk fibroin are legion ranging from tissue adhesives to thermoplastics, for use from biosensing to 3D printing. See Sahoo et al.

Image: Yu-Ting Dingle. Cover design: Carl Conway

Volume 7 Issue 5

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In the Classroom

  • Creating a more inclusive classroom environment starts with educating instructors about the needs of their students. Once those needs are understood, work to address them may not only benefit the small group of students for whom the intervention was intended, but the wider class too.

    • Christina Goudreau Collison
    In the Classroom

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Research Highlights

  • Hydroxylamine is a molecule of prebiotic interest, but its estimated abundance in space is orders of magnitude greater than what we have observed. To answer this discrepancy, quantum chemical calculations are used to investigate its formation and destruction pathways.

    • Alexander Rosu-Finsen
    Research Highlight

  • Hydrogenation reactions of alkynes to cis-alkenes is typically carried out with precious metal catalysts. A new zinc complex represents a rare example of a non-transition metal able to carry out this stereoselective transformation.

    • Stephanie Greed
    Research Highlight

  • A bacterial tridecasaccharide known to prevent inflammatory bowel disease has been synthesized.

    • Stephen G. Davey
    Research Highlight
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Reviews

  • Silk chemistries, mechanisms and biomaterial designs are discussed. Utility of chemically modified silk for different biomedical applications such as tissue engineering, adhesives, drug delivery and biosensors, among others, is highlighted. Different design strategies to improve biomedical outcomes are also addressed.

    • Jugal Kishore Sahoo
    • Onur Hasturk
    • David L. Kaplan
    Review Article

  • Small-molecule inhibitors offer many advantages for manipulating the gut microbiome, both as tool compounds and as potential therapeutics. This Review highlights recent examples of inhibitors that target gut bacterial enzymatic activity as well as the challenges and opportunities associated with their design and development.

    • Amelia Y. M. Woo
    • Miguel A. Aguilar Ramos
    • Emily P. Balskus
    Review Article

  • Mycobacterium tuberculosis-mediated metabolism of xenobiotics poses an important research question for antitubercular drug discovery. Identification of the metabolic fate of compounds can inform requisite structure–activity relationship strategies early on in a drug discovery programme towards improving the properties of the compound.

    • Vinayak Singh
    • Godwin Akpeko Dziwornu
    • Kelly Chibale
    Review Article

  • Chiral molecules in biosamples are promising biomarkers for disease diagnosis and prognosis. The authors describe techniques for detecting and quantifying small-molecule enantiomers and approaches to improving these techniques.

    • Yaoran Liu
    • Zilong Wu
    • Yuebing Zheng
    Review Article
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