On the outside front cover

Reaction of a free-base porphyrin with iodine acetate gives a radical cation intermediate that can combine with an acetate anion leading to the acetoxylated product or an iodine radical to form the iodo-substituted porphyrin. 

 

Emerging Area

Recent advances in PET imaging of biomolecules, i.e., peptides, proteins, antibodies, glycoproteins, and oligonucleotides, are overviewed by Katsunori Tanaka and Koichi Fukase.

 

Emerging Area

Since their discovery in 1991, manzacidins have attracted much attention from the synthetic community because of their unique structures and scarcity in nature. Synthetic approaches for manzacidins including Lewis acid catalysis and organocatalysis, as well as transition-metal catalysis, are summarized by Takuya Hashimoto and Keiji Maruoka in this article.

Perspective

A high-activity mutant (A199S/S287G/A328W/Y332G) of human butyrylcholinesterase was designed and discovered to stabilize the rate-determining transition state for butyrylcholinesterase-catalyzed hydrolysis of (-)-cocaine based on transition state modeling and simulation.