Metal-Free C–N coupling via Smiles Rearrangement

Recently published paper in Nature Communications claims (as the title says): “General method for carbon–heteroatom cross-coupling reactions via semiheterogeneous red-light metallaphotocatalysis” Quite a bold statement, so let’ take a look at it. Key highlights include: ✅ Red light penetrates 23x deeper than blue light – enabling gram-scale reactions in 10 cm flasks ✅ Four bond…

Forget your fume hood, E. coli just became your new reaction vessel 💡 What’s new?Researchers have shown that a classic organic transformation (the Lossen rearrangement) runs smoothly inside E. coli cells. The reaction uses only phosphate as a catalyst, so no engineered enzyme is needed. By converting a specially activated precursor into para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA), the reaction restores growth to an E. coli strain that cannot…

The microcosmos of biological processes is complex and full of surprises. This is also the case for a new preprint from Richert, Nůsková et al. While developing rabeprazole-thalidomide hybrids as targeted protein degraders, the authors observed rapid, reversible ATP depletion in cells. Surprisingly, this effect was attributed to PROTAC molecules with a certain molecular structure. 𝗠𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗺Mechanistic…