logan's run but pop tart

Call For Papers: Chemistry and Biology of Peptides | ACS Publications Chemistry Blog This Special Issue will celebrate the chemistry and biology of peptides, from synthesis, to structure and modifications, to biology and applications, and finally to degradation. Submit your manuscript...

Consider submitting your peptide research to a special joint issue of JOC and Biochemistry on the Chemistry and Biology of Peptides!

axial.acs.org/biology-and-...

oni-baba Purdue pete

so far

I'm extremely fortunate to have this opportunity. It's the latest in a long line of mentors and organizations opening up doors for me. Thank you for your part in opening doors!

It's an honor to be a part of this cohort! I am extremely thankful that the ACS is willing to sponsor young scientists during these uncertain times.

Check out our review on DNA-scaffolded catalysis! This link provides free full text access until the end of 2025: authors.elsevier.com/a/1m43W9CpcY.... Big thanks to co-authors @edwardpimentel.bsky.social , Ashley Ogorek, @ethan-hartman-125.bsky.social , and Caleb Cox

This is code for “our university is in a deeply precarious financial situation and making large cuts to many our most important programs – we can’t afford this loser's buyout”

I had the privilege of reading many early drafts of this work. Since the beginning the conclusion that we're potentially missing significant structural information using routine characterization methods has fascinated me. Great job, Brenna!

I received many requests to share materials from our undergraduate course “Machine Learning in Chemistry”
— here you go!

A preprint summarizing insights and lessons learned:
chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...

A Jupyter Notebook Tutorial Gallery:
xuhuihuang.github.io/mlchem/html/...

Open-Source Photochemistry in the Organic Chemistry Teaching Laboratory We report the development of an undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory exercise that utilizes a set of low-cost, open-source photoreactors to introduce students to photochemical principles. A seri...

We built some open source photo reactors and implemented them into the organic teaching lab here at Bradley. This was a fun project led mainly by the undergraduate students! Check it out: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Bifunctional Catalysis of Aldol Reactions by Foldamer Dihydrazides: Assessment of Conformational Preorganization We previously reported that molecules containing two cyclic hydrazide units connected by a polymethylene linker could catalyze aldol condensations via a bifunctional mechanism. One hydrazide apparentl...

My work assessing the effect of preorganization on dihydrazide activity is out in @jacs.acspublications.org. We find that dihydrazides with flexible tethers can replicate much of the catalytic activity of complex dihydrazides with preorganized foldamer scaffolds. #Chemsky

doi.org/10.1021/jacs...

Purdue Pete in an onibaba mask

Catch Lauren Tran’s talk, “Potent and biased peptide agonists of the PTHR1, a Class B GPCR, from a heterochiral design strategy” at 5:30 PM Monday in Meeting Room 4 of the Westin Hotel as part of the Student Research session!

Excited to share our new preprint, which was years in the making! chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...
New reactions are typically developed by trial and error. How can we speed up this process? Read on to learn how we used DNA scaffolding to perform >500,000 parallel reactions on attomole scale.
1/n

New @chemrxiv.bsky.social preprint!

RoboChem-Flex is a powerful, low-cost (<5k EUR), modular self-driving lab for chemical synthesis

We showcase 6 studies (photochemistry, biocatalysis, cross coupling, ee ...), all optimized with different configurations & ML

🔗 chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...

It's great to hear from you! Thank you - I have some interesting organocatalysis about to be published and I'll soon join the Sigman lab as a postdoc. I hope all is well in Baltimore. Thanks again for being a great mentor (you and the other USF faculty are acknowledged in my dissertation)!

Versatile Open-Source Photoreactor Architecture for Photocatalysis Across the Visible Spectrum Adoption of commercial photoreactors as standards for photocatalysis research could be limited by high cost. We report the development of the Wisconsin Photoreactor Platform (WPP), an open-source phot...

#chemsky, have you used a Wisconsin Photoreactor? I designed them and will soon defend my PhD. I’d like to include photos of Wisconsin Photoreactors in use by other chemists in my defense. Please share (reply to this post or DM me) a photo of your photoreactor in action!

doi.org/10.1021/acs....

Woah! I designed this - If you need anything, the UW-Madison electronics shop stocks every part for the Wisconsin Photoreactor. I'd be happy to send any part you need.

Evidence for Topological States and a Lifshitz Transition in Metastable 2M‐WSe2 This study demonstrates the Fermi surface characteristics and transport properties of 2M-WSe2 bulk single crystals. The measurements and first-principles calculations reveal multiple Fermi pockets wi...

Our work on 2M-WSe2 is out now in Adv. Funct. Mater.!
doi.org/10.1002/adfm...

Cross-Electrophile Coupling to Form Sterically Hindered C(sp2)–C(sp3) Bonds: Ni and Co Afford Complementary Reactivity The formation of sterically hindered C(sp2)–C(sp3) bonds could be a useful synthetic tool but has been understudied in cross-electrophile coupling. Here, we report two methods that couple secondary alkyl bromides with aryl halides that contain sterically hindered C–X bonds: 1) ortho-substituted aryl bromides with nickel catalysts and 2) di-ortho-substituted aryl iodides with cobalt catalysts. Stoichiometric experiments and deuterium labeling studies show that 1) [Co] is better than [Ni] for oxidative addition of di-ortho-substituted Ar–I and 2) [Co] is better than [Ni] for radical capture/reductive elimination steps with di-ortho-substituted arenes. For both metals, Ar–H side products observed in reactions with low-yielding di-ortho-substituted aryl iodides appear to arise from Ar• formation and hydrogen-atom transfer from the solvent. While the origins of the differences in scope are not yet understood, these studies demonstrate a previously unknown complementarity between nickel and cobalt in cross-electrophile coupling.

Our work on Ni- and Co-catalyzed Cross-Electrophile Coupling to Form Sterically Hindered C(sp2)–C(sp3) Bonds is now online at J.A.C.S.! @pubs.acs.org Congrats to Tianrui, Anthony, Kasturi, and our collaborators Madeline (@kozlowskigroup.bsky.social) and @novartis.bsky.social doi.org/10.1021/jacs...

A glycan foldamer that uses carbohydrate–aromatic interactions to perform catalysis - Nature Chemistry In nature, catalysis is generally performed by proteins and ribozymes. Now it has been shown that glycans can be designed to perform catalysis. Exploiting carbohydrate–aromatic interactions, a glycan ...

Can glycans catalyze chemical reactions?
Check out our glycan foldamer that uses carbohydrate–aromatic interactions to perform catalysis, today out in @naturechemistry.bsky.social

Big congrats to Kaimeng!

@mpici.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Onipete

Herbie and Bucky have joined up to defeat the rest of the B1G

A graphical table of content for the journal paper described in this post. 7- and 8-membered rings that feature unusual ring chirality are synthesized in an enantioenriched fashion under mild conditions by the action of the same iminophosphorane superbase catalyst.

It is finally out: my long-time obsession with "inherently" chiral medium-sized rings now has a catalytic, enantioselective method. After a number of disconnection attempts, we developed a strategy based on choosing the maximally preorganized disconnection, which [1/3] pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

This project was inspired by the excellent work of the @gleason-group.bsky.social. I’m delighted to finally share the first of several investigations of organocatalysis by flexible bifunctional catalysts.

Dual Activation Modes Enable Bifunctional Catalysis of Aldol Reactions by Flexible Dihydrazides Hydrazides are known to catalyze reactions of α,β-unsaturated aldehydes via transient iminium formation. The iminium intermediate displays enhanced electrophilicity, which facilitates conjugate additi...

My work on bifunctional organocatalysis of aldol reactions by flexible dihydrazides is out in JACS (@pubs.acs.org). I find that hydrazide units connected by long, flexible linkers offer significant rate enhancement relative to monohydrazides. doi.org/10.1021/jacs... #ChemSky

Alkene Carboxy-Alkylation via CO2•– Herein, we introduce a new platform for alkene carboxy-alkylation. This reaction is designed around CO2•– addition to alkenes followed by radical polar crossover, which enables alkylation through carbanion attack on carbonyl electrophiles. We discovered that CO2•– adds to alkenes faster than it reduces carbonyl electrophiles and that this reactivity can be exploited by accessing CO2•– via hydrogen atom transfer from formate. This photocatalytic system transforms vinylarenes and carbonyl compounds into a diverse array of substituted γ-lactone products. Furthermore, indoles can be engaged through dearomative carboxy-alkylation, delivering medicinally relevant C(sp3)-rich heterocyclic scaffolds. Mechanistic studies reveal that the active photocatalyst is generated in situ through a photochemically induced reaction between the precatalyst and DMSO. Overall, we have developed a three-component alkene carboxy-alkylation reaction enabled by the use of formate as the CO2•– precursor.

As part of our ongoing collaboration with @charlesthechemist.bsky.social at Merck, we found a new way to promote alkene carboxy-alkylation that exploits the unique chemoselectivity profile of CO2•- accessed from formate! Check it out! Also, first #ChemSky post! Congrats to all the authors!!!

Do we post papers here now? Online now in JACS: pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.... Jennifer’s enduring work in making a small structural modification with huge consequences for efficient radiochelation. We identify the Goldilocks zone for inner-sphere fluorination and accommodating small rare earths. ☢️