Volume 7 Issue 8, August 2023

A review of Dan Egan’s book The Devil’s Element, where he explores the element that both makes plants grow and toxifies our water — phosphorus.

A living catalyst transfer polymerization enables access to low dispersity polyphenylenes and ultimately to length-selective synthesis of graphene nanoribbons.

The synthesis of a new family of self-assembled Ca²⁺-seamed capsules is reported. The interior volumes are the largest currently reported voids in molecular capsules, and they are completely isolated from the exterior environments.

A clean and non-toxic, one-step keratin crosslinking approach has been described, paving the way for greener and more sustainable hair styling.

Late-stage modification of peptides with photoactivatable groups often weakens their binding interaction with target proteins. Now, this challenge has been addressed using large libraries of cyclic peptides with photocrosslinkers incorporated prior to screening.

Enzyme conformational plasticity plays an important part in expanding the functional diversity of a limited repertoire of sequences. This Review discusses the role of flexible loops in enzyme evolution, focusing on both examples from natural evolution and engineering success stories.

The structure and properties of cyclopropane have intrigued chemists for decades, with an increasing demand for methods to functionalize these small carbocycles. This Review provides a summary of transition-metal-catalysed C–C bond formation at cyclopropanes, including cross-coupling with cyclopropyl nucleophiles or electrophiles, C–H functionalization and single-electron cross-coupling strategies.

Cyclopentadienyl ligands are cornerstones of organometallic chemistry and can have an active role in stoichiometric and catalytic reactions by facilitating the transfer of a proton, hydride or hydrogen atom.

The development of radical sulfurating reagents, which react with carbon-centred radicals to install a variety of organosulfur motifs in a highly selective manner, circumvents the need to preserve these often-vulnerable moieties through lengthy syntheses.