New publication

Harpreet, Sophia, and Emilie’s paper on an H2-driven Ni-catalyzed reaction network that can make new ketoacids through reductive aldol chemistry and enable their reductive amination to amino acids in one pot without human intervention has been accepted for publication in Chem. Many thanks to our collaborators in Germany (Dr. Harun Tüysuz, Dr. Youngsong Dong and Prof. Bill Martin). Congrats to all!

New publication

Emilie’s side project on the incorporation of sulfoximines into the aza-Piancatelli reaction has been published in Organic Letters. Our summer student from Heidelberg, Milena Wiegand, contributed to the project during her stay. Congrats to all!

Dr. Yannick Geiger joins the lab

A warm welcome to Yannick Geiger, who joins us from the group of Prof. Sijbren Otto at the University of Groningen, where he worked at the interface of systems chemistry and chirality. In our Strasbourg lab, Yannick will work on exploiting aggregation in prebiotic chemistry. Welcome, Yannick!

Robert leaves for TU Munich

Congratulations and farewell to DFG postdoctoral fellow Dr. Robert Mayer, who departs us to become an independent junior group leader at TU Munich. Robert published eight papers in the group, with two still under review. He recently received a Liebig fellowship from the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie (FCI). See photo below of our lab members sporting Mayer Lab T-shirts. Best of luck with the launch of the Mayer Lab and come visit often!

New publication

Joris and Robert’s paper on the mechanism of the nonenzymatic phosphorylation of pyruvate to phosphoenolpyruvate is published in Chemical Science. The results suggest that a single phosphorylation mechanism could have been sufficient to initiate a self-organized metabolic network. Congrats to all!

New publication

Emilie and Silvana’s paper on Fe(III)/ADP-promoted phosphate transfer from acetyl phosphate to nucleotide diphosphates to give nucleotide triphosphate in water is accepted in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Thanks to Robert for jumping in with DFT calculations during revisions. Congrats to all!