Editor's Choice

Professor Ben Feringa from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, chooses his favourite works published in OBC during 2006:

My selection of articles is from the 2006 issues of the journal and from different areas of organic chemistry. Although I had many more favourites, I selected the following five articles that I liked in particular.

 

 

This first paper by Yi Lu and Juewen Liu from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US, shows the aggregation behaviour of nanoparticles, in response to chemical stimuli, controlled by asymmetric DNAzymes. This hybrid system combines, in an elegant way, several functions to allow dynamic control of assembly in response to chemical stimuli at room temperature.

This paper, by Dennis Taylor and colleagues at the University of Adelaide, Australia, covers the first total synthesis of grenadamide. The use of 3,6-disubstituted 1,2-dioxine as a starting material in a short, total synthesis route to the natural product makes this work particularly attractive.

My next choice is a Perspective article by James Nowick, University of California, Irvine, US. 'What I have learned by using chemical model systems to study biomolecular structure and interactions' discusses the design, synthesis and structures of chemical models for protein beta-sheet structures in an illuminating manner. Besides the emerging insights from these studies the author also takes the reader through important aspects of discovery with a personal touch.

Jonathan Clayden and Neoclis Vassiliou, University of Manchester, UK, wrote the Emerging Area article 'Stereochemical relays: communication via conformation'. Conformational control is an important, fundamental issue in many areas of chemistry; including structure and function of biomolecules, asymmetric catalysis and the functioning of materials. The authors discuss clearly how long-range communication in molecules through conformational control operates and can be applied.

My final selection is a paper by Shu Kobayashi and colleagues at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Metal leaching and catalyst regeneration are key problems in catalytic transformations. New incarceration methodology is described for catalyst immobilization of precious metals like palladium using phosphorus derived polymers. The catalyst combines good selectivity in alkyne hydrogenation with the possibility for simple separation and reuse.