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The polar retrosynthetic analysis has been widely employed in the field of organic synthesis and forms the basis of undergraduate curriculum. Although most reactions in organic synthesis rely on this rubric to guide their strategic application, their implementation often requires a long list of ancillary considerations to mitigate chemoselectivity and oxidation state issues involving protecting groups and precise reaction choreography. Here we demonstrate a complete departure from this norm by the use of a radical based Ni/Ag-electrocatalytic cross coupling of α-substituted carboxylic acids, thereby enabling an intuitive and modular approach to accessing complex molecular architectures. This new method relies on a key silver additive that forms an active Ag-nanoparticle coated electrode surface in situ along with carefully chosen ligands that modulate the reactivity of Ni. Through judicious choice of conditions and ligands, the cross-couplings can be rendered highly diastereoselective. To demonstrate the simplifying power of these reactions, exceedingly concise syntheses of 14 natural products and two medicinally relevant molecules were completed.

The tris-boryl complex [(Me3P)3Co(Bcat)3], obtained by oxidative addition of B2cat2 to [(Me3P)4Co-Me] via the mono-boryl complex [(Me3P)4Co-Bcat], exhibits unique structural and electronic properti...

Fragmentation methods based on the many-body expansion offer an attractive approach for the quantum-chemical treatment of large molecular systems, such as molecular clusters and crystals. Conventionally, the many-body expansion is performed for the total energy, but such an energy-based many-body expansion often suffers from a slow convergence with respect to the expansion order. For systems that show strong polarization effects such as water clusters, this can render the energy-based many-body expansion infeasible. Here, we establish a density-based many-body expansion as a promising alternative approach. By performing the many-body expansion for the electron density instead of the total energy and inserting the resulting total electron density into the total energy functional of density-functional theory, one can derive a density-based energy correction, which in principle accounts for all higher order polarization effects. Here, we systematically assess the accuracy of such a density-based many-body expansion for test sets of water clusters. We show that already a density-based two-body expansion is able to reproduce interaction energies per fragment within chemical accuracy, and is able to accurately predict the energetic ordering as well as the relative interaction energies of different isomers of water clusters.

Fragmentation methods allow for the accuratequantum-chemical treatment of large molecular clusters and materials. Here, we explore the combination of two complementary approaches to the development of such fragmentation methods: the many-body expansion (MBE) on the one hand and subsystem density-functional theory (DFT) or frozen-density embedding (FDE) theory on the other hand. First, we assess potential benefits of using FDE to account of the environmentin the subsystem calculation performed within the MBE. Second, we use subsystem DFT to derive a density-based MBE, in which a many-body expansion of the electron density is used to calculate the systems' total energy. This provides a correctionto the energies calculated with a conventional, energy-based MBE that only depends on the subsystem's electron densities. For the test case of clusters of water and of aspirin, we show that such a density-based MBE converges faster than the conventional energy-based MBE. For our test cases, truncation errors in the interaction energies are below chemical accuracy already with a two-body expansion. The density-based MBE thus provides a promising avenue for accurate quantum-chemical calculation of molecular clusters and materials.

The modeling of nonlinear descriptor-target relationships is a topic of considerable interest in drug discovery. We, herein, continue reporting the use of the self-organizing map-a nonlinear, topology-preserving pattern recognition technique that exhibits considerable promise in modeling and decoding these relationships. Since simulated annealing is an efficient tool for solving optimization problems, we combined the supervised self-organizing map with simulated annealing to build high-quality, highly predictive quantitative structure-activity/property relationship models. This technique was applied to six data sets representing a variety of biological endpoints. Since a high statistical correlation in the training set does not indicate a highly predictive model, the quality of all the models was confirmed by withholding a portion of each data set for external validation. Finally, we introduce new cross-validation and dynamic partitioning techniques to address model overfitting and assessment.

The utility of the supervised Kohonen self-organizing map was assessed and compared to several statistical methods used in QSAR analysis. The self-organizing map (SOM) describes a family of nonlinear, topology preserving mapping methods with attributes of both vector quantization and clustering that provides visualization options unavailable with other nonlinear methods. In contrast to most chemometric methods, the supervised SOM (sSOM) is shown to be relatively insensitive to noise and feature redundancy. Additionally, sSOMs can make use of descriptors having only nominal linear correlation with the target property. Results herein are contrasted to partial least squares, stepwise multiple linear regression, the genetic functional algorithm, and genetic partial least squares, collectively referred to throughout as the "standard methods". The k-nearest neighbor (kNN) classification method was also performed to provide a direct comparison with a different classification method. The widely studied dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) inhibition data set of Hansch and Silipo is used to evaluate the ability of sSOMs to classify unknowns as a function of increasing class resolution. The contribution of the sSOM neighborhood kernel to its predictive ability is assessed in two experiments: (1) training with the k-means clustering limit, where the neighborhood radius is zero throughout the training regimen, and (2) training the sSOM until the neighborhood radius is reduced to zero. Results demonstrate that sSOMs provide more accurate predictions than standard linear QSAR methods.

An aquatic natural organic matter sample was concentrated by membrane filtration and fractionated using a size exclusion chromatography (SEC) system with a Superdex 75 column. Stability over time was investigated by reinjection of selected fractions. The reinjection yielded single peaks of a more or less Gaussian shape. From the peak shape of the individual fractions it was concluded that non-SEC mechanisms play an important role for the elution behavior. No significant change in the UV chromatograms could be detected over 5 weeks, suggesting a high stability of the fractions and only little or no alterations of the molecular weight distribution during that time period. The fractions were reexamined using a liquid chromatography system with online dissolved organic carbon detection (LCDOC system) with a TSK HW-50 (S) column. The average total recoveries of all fractions were 90 ± 4% for the Superdex system (calculated from UV-peak areas), and 102% and 105% for the spectral UV-absorbances (UVA) and dissolv...

AhpF, the flavin-containing component of the Salmonella typhimurium alkyl hydroperoxide reductase system, catalyzes the NADH-dependent reduction of an active-site disulfide bond in the other component, AhpC, which in turn reduces hydroperoxide substrates. The amino acid sequence of the C-terminus of AhpF is 35% identical to that of thioredoxin reductase (TrR) from Escherichia coli. AhpF contains an additional 200-residue N-terminal domain possessing a second redox-active disulfide center also required for AhpC reduction. Our studies indicate that this N-terminus contains a tandem repeat of two thioredoxin (Tr)-like folds, the second of which contains the disulfide redox center. Structural and catalytic properties of independently expressed fragments of AhpF corresponding to the TrR-like C-terminus (F[208-521]) and the 2Tr-like N-terminal domain (F[1-202]) have been addressed. Enzymatic assays, reductive titrations, and circular dichroism studies of the fragments indicate that each folds properly and retains many functional properties. Electron transfer between F[208-521] and F[1-202] is, however, relatively slow (4 x 10(4) M(-)(1) s(-)(1) at 25 degrees C) and nonsaturable up to 100 microM F[1-202]. TrR is nearly as efficient at F[1-202] reduction as is F[208-521], although neither the latter fragment, nor intact AhpF, can reduce Tr. An engineered mutant AhpC substrate with a fluorophore attached via a disulfide bond has been used to demonstrate that only F[1-202], and not F[208-521], is capable of electron transfer to AhpC, thereby establishing the direct role this N-terminal domain plays in mediating electron transfer between the TrR-like part of AhpF and AhpC.

The regulation of hepatic lipase (HL) by the lipid composition of monomolecular substrate films was examined using a monolayer technique at constant surface pressure. HL-catalyzed hydrolysis of triacylglycerol, a poor substrate for HL in pure monomolecular films, was activated by diradylglycerol and its phosphorylated derivatives in mixed films containing 10 mol % triacylglycerol. When triacylglycerol was progressively diluted with dialkylglycerol, triacylglycerol hydrolysis by HL was maximal between 90 and 98 mol % dialkylglycerol. The best activators, dialkylphosphatidic acid and dialkylphosphatidylethanolamine, increased triacylglycerol hydrolysis 13-14-fold, and the enhancement of HL-catalyzed triacylglycerol hydrolysis by the activator lipids was inversely related to the average mean molecular area of the mixed films. The hydrolysis of 5 mol % triacylglycerol in mixed films that also contained phosphatidylcholine and 0-20 mol % cholesterol was inhibited approximately 80% when the concentration of cholesterol was 10-13 mol %. Interestingly, between 15 and 17 mol % cholesterol the hydrolysis rate was restored to about 50% of the uninhibited rate, but at 20 mol % cholesterol this value decreased back to 80% inhibition of hydrolysis. The hydrolysis of phosphatidylethanolamine in mixed films with 0-20 mol % cholesterol decreased approximately 30% in films containing 10-12 mol % cholesterol. However, at 15 mol % cholesterol the hydrolysis rate was restored to the same level observed for a pure phosphatidylethanolamine film. This enhancement of HL activity occurred at about the same cholesterol concentration as the restoration of triacylglycerol hydrolysis observed for the triacylglycerol/phosphatidylcholine/cholesterol films.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)