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!
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!
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.
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!
Ed’s invited review on nickel catalysis enabled by stoichiometric metallic reducing agents has been published in Synthesis. Congrats!
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.
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!
Marian, Ed and Guang’s article on catalytic substitution of alkyl fluorides has been published in Journal of Fluorine Chemistry. Special congrats to Guang, who did a large part of this work during his M1 stage.
Our invited Synpacts article in Synlett has been chosen as the cover for the December 1st issue. Yay!
A “Synpacts” article highlighting our recent work on using complex mixtures for catalyst discovery has been accepted for publication in Synlett. Thanks to Prof. Peter Vollhardt for the kind invitation!
