Themed collection Highlights in Chemistry

A brief history of encapsulation, release and applications in the field of polyelectrolyte multilayer capsules is highlighted, and perspectives are discussed.

The highlight reviews the last 20 years of research in DNA-encoded chemical library field and describes how this new “drug discovery tool’’ will soon greatly contribute both to hit discovery and to a better understanding of biochemical pathways.

We discuss current and future peptidic scaffolds as regenerative therapies, with a focus on development of complex and integrated systems.

How to convert light directly into motion? The design of optomechanical systems with focus on optimizing single molecule transduction is highlighted.

Peptides have been developed for manifold different reactions as effective asymmetric catalysts.

This highlight describes the last ten years of nascent research into how enzymes, the workhorses of living systems, can be utilized to build and manipulate synthetic organic nanomaterials in new and exciting ways.

Various classes of luminescent complexes of d⁶, d⁸ and d¹⁰ transition metal centres and their excited state properties are highlighted.

A large and exotic family of actinide borates have been developed yielding unprecedented structural features and useful physico-chemical properties. There are several grand challenges that this work addresses.

Recent advances on the design of biocompatible and biodegradable functionalised carbon nanotubes have important implications for their potential translation to the clinic.

This highlight article presents an overview of syntheses of macrocyclic peptides derived from their precursor peptides expressed by translation.

New frontiers in combinatorial chemistry are highlighted, in particular the development of libraries of natural product-like molecules for unbiased screening.

The present highlight summarizes the recent development of lipophilic gold(III) cations and gold(I) complexes with promising anti-cancer activities.

This Highlight summarizes recent advances in photocatalytic hydrogen production using single or multiple component systems and outlines challenges for future research in this area.

Molecular complexes of uranium are capable of activating a range of industrially and economically important small molecules such as CO, CO₂, and N₂; new and often unexpected reactions provide insight into an element that needs to be well-understood if future clean-energy solutions are to involve nuclear power.

New feedback active systems are main subject of this highlight since many current protective coatings have health hazards and low efficiency.

Artificial metalloenzymes combine homogenous catalysts and bio-macromolecules by design; the product of which is a hybrid that transmits high ee's and novel products sublime.

Synthetic transport systems for anions may provide potential future treatments for diseases like cystic fibrosis by restoring chloride permeability of epithelial cell membranes.

Chiral iridium catalysts based on P,N ligands have strongly expanded the application range of asymmetric hydrogenation. They do not require the presence of a coordinating group near the CC bond and, therefore, allow highly enantioselective hydrogenations of largely unfunctionalized alkenes.

The study of bacterial symbionts of eukaryotic hosts has become a powerful discovery engine for chemistry.

Gelatinous composites formed by dispersion of carbon nanomaterials in ionic liquids are readily processable potent materials with superb electronic properties.

Chemistry has played a vital role in making routine, affordable sequencing of human genomes a reality; this article focuses on Solexa sequencing and its impact on science and medicine.

Nucleic acids chemistry has had widespread influence in biology, medicine and nanotechnology. The future is aiming toward cellular functions.

This Highlight article describes in an al fresco style how the conceptual framework of metathesis has impacted on the practice of natural product synthesis since the turn of the century.

Advances in the synthesis of glycans, glycoconjugates and new technology development have contributed to our understanding of the structure and function of glycans.

From oligomers to protein-sized architectures, foldamers introduce new tools and concepts to develop bioactive substances, synthetic receptors and materials.

So far the application of iron is underdeveloped in comparison to other transition metals. Herein, we highlight promising examples for hydrogenation, transfer hydrogenation and hydrosilylation, which illustrate the potential of iron and hopefully initialize a ferric future for catalysis.

Molecular Bits and Chips: Profiling and discovering the next generation of small molecule ligands.

Recent developments in the chemistry of resorcin[4]arene and pyrogallol[4]arene capsules are reviewed.

This highlight article gives an overview on the development of highly promising ambient stable n-channel organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) based on naphthalene and perylene tetracarboxylic diimides during the last decade.

Ten essentials of flow chemistry provide an insight into current and future issues and trends into this emerging field of organic synthesis.

meso-Aryl-substituted expanded porphyrins are simple porphyrin homologues consisting of more than five pyrrolic units but serve as a nice platform to realize versatile aromatic, antiaromatic, and radical molecules including Möbius aromatic and antiaromatic species.

Over the past decade, resistance to antibiotics has emerged as a crisis of global proportion that is threatening our ability to control infectious diseases. The molecular logic of resistance is grounded in the chemistry of antibiotic action and detailed mechanisms of resistance strategies including molecular bypass, enzyme catalyzed degradation, active efflux, and target modification. Highlights from molecular resistance research emerging over the past decade are presented.

The design and implementation of sustainable chemical production processes require an increasing integration of molecular and reaction engineering principles as highlighted here for selected examples that capitalize simultaneously on the selectivity control of organometallic catalysis and the process intensification of continuous flow-systems.

Having high surface areas, tunable pore sizes, large pore volumes, stable and interconnected pore networks, and active pore surfaces, ordered mesoporous materials have shown promising performance for capacious uptake and separation of a wide range of guest species through either simple physisorption or well-designed specific binding. Such adsorption-based process may lead to one of the most efficient routes for pollution control, gas storage and bio-applications in the future.

This article examines advances made towards the catalytic use of carbon dioxide to produce useful compounds and reagents and the promise held by developments in C–H bond functionalisation using CO₂.

Detailed molecular information obtained by imaging mass spectrometry (MS) makes this technique suitable for a range of forensic and clinical applications. The emerging ambient ionization techniques allow imaging in the open environment and are advancing the technology toward surgical practice.

Light is a powerful tool to operate and monitor artificial molecular machines. In future, these systems could enable the construction of intelligent materials or perform functions inside our body.

Chiral non-racemic thioethers, acting as nucleophilic organocatalysts or ligands in metal-catalysis, provide new methodologies enabling asymmetric synthesis of complex targets.

Supramolecular gels are fascinating soft materials with a growing list of hi-tech, niche applications. This article reviews the progress in their chemistry over the past decade.

From its origins to current and future applications, basic tools and challenges in the field of droplet microfluidics are reviewed.

This review highlights the recent advances in chemistry of cleaving carbon–carbon bonds by means of transition metals by extracting the notable examples from literature of the past decade.

Mechanistic models of BINAP–Ru-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenations have presented organic synthetic chemists with “leading concepts” for designing new catalysts.

Developing renewable energy is one of the challenges to society in the 21st century. One of the renewable energy technologies is solar energy conversion. This highlight surveys recent breakthroughs in the field of implementing carbon nanostructures—fullerenes (0D), carbon nanotubes (1D), carbon nanohorns, and graphene (2D)—into solar energy conversion schemes, that is, bulk heterojunction and dye-sensitized solar cells.

This highlight article looks back at progress in anion receptor chemistry in the last decade and ahead to developments in sensing, catalysis and transport that are on the horizon.