Our third paper on the chemical origins of life is published in Nature. We show that ferrous iron promotes a one-pot reaction network that resembles the Krebs cycle and amino acid synthesis, starting from just pyruvate and glyoxylate. These enzyme-free reactions could have been a precursor to biological metabolism. Congrats to Kamila and Sreejith! Free read-only version here. Paywall version here. Also, check out the accompanying News & Views article by Robert Pascal here.
Publications
New publication
Kamila and Elodie’s invited account of our recent work on non-enzymatic metabolic pathways has been published in Bioorganic & Medicinal Letters. The special issue is in honor of the 2019 Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award to Dr. Raphaël Rodriguez.
New publication
Elodie’s collaboration with Dr. Samir Mameri (IUT Robert Schuman) and Profs. Ruhlmann (Strasbourg) and Schmitt (Dublin) on the properties of Mn clusters has been published in Dalton Transactions. Congrats, Elodie!
New publication
The second paper from our collaboration with the Ebbesen group describing how running a reaction between two appropriately-spaced mirrors can change its selectivity has appeared in Science. Congrats to Lucas from our lab and to all who participated from the Ebbesen group!
New publication
Ed, Jing and Vuk’s paper in Chemical Science shows that hexafluoroisopropanol solvent enables simple monosubstituted cyclopropanes to undergo ring-opening hydroarylation – no donor-acceptor motif required. A good chunk of this work came from Jing’s M2 internship in our group. Special thanks to the Rowley group from Memorial University in Canada for the DFT calculations. Congrats to all!
New publication
Our second paper on the chemical origins of life is published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. We show that metallic iron powder fixes carbon dioxide as acetate and pyruvate much like the Acetyl CoA pathway, an ancient biological pathway used by microbes to build themselves. It represents a rare “chemistry-up” experiment that connects with the current “biology-down” understanding of early life. Congrats to Sreejith, Kamila and Paul! Free read-only version here. Paywall version here. Also check out the accompanying Behind the Paper post here.
New publication
Ed and Vuk’s paper on the accelerating effect of HFIP solvent on nucleophilic ring-opening of donor-acceptor cyclopropanes has been published in Organic Letters. Congrats!
New publication
Ed’s invited review on nickel catalysis enabled by stoichiometric metallic reducing agents has been published in Synthesis. Congrats!
New publication
Our paper on the chemical origins of life is published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. We show that more than half of the reverse Krebs cycle can occur without enzymes. Congrats to Kamila, Sreejith, Elodie, Lucas and Guang for an amazing team effort! A free link to the paper is here. The journal’s paywall version is here. Also check out our Behind the Paper blog post on the journal’s web site here.
New publication
Vuk, Ed and Eléna’s article on HFIP-assisted dehydrative Friedel-Crafts reactions of highly deactivated benzylic alcohols has been accepted for publication in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. It is Vuk’s first paper from his PhD and Eléna’s last. Congrats!
