Emerging Area 

Brian Stoltz and colleagues from California Institute of Technology, US, describe recent advances in the preparation of enantioenriched materials by stereoablation - the use of catalytic methods which destroy stereogenic elements of a molecule.

Perspective and outside front cover 

Recent notable developments in the design, synthesis and applications of alpha-helices - the most predominant secondary structure units in proteins - and mimetics are discussed by James Garner and Margaret Harding from The University of New South Wales, Australia. 

Inside front cover 

Heidi Huttunen-Hennelly and John Sherman from The University of British Columbia, Canada, report the design, synthesis, and characterization of three families of cavitand-based template-assembled synthetic proteins (hetero-TASPs). 

Hot paper 

Andreas Kirschning and colleagues from Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany, develop a microreactor concept based on their recently reported PASSflow(polymer-assisted solution phase synthesis under flow conditions) system, and show how it can be used for the purification and immobilisation of tagged proteins.

Hot paper 

Richard Hooley and Julius Rebek Jr from The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, US,show how maleimides can be activated towards Diels-Alder reaction with suitable dienes through hydrogen bonding interactions with a cavitand.