No Added Chemicals

This time, it is less than a week until Christmas and it is quite appropriate if this time we are digging one of the stories around Christmas, which is the adoration of the magi. The magi, sometimes they are called the wise men or kings, travelled from far east to Bethlehem following the Star of Bethlehem to pay homage to the Infant Jesus. They also brought three gifts to be given to the King of kings: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. This story and the gifts they brought are immortalised in several Christmas carols, one of them is  "We Three Kings " by John Henry Hopkins. We Three Kings  arr. Martin Neary and sung by King's College Choir at 2012 Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. For lyrics, click here . This time, for Christmas special, we'll see the chemical significance of those gifts for the Infant Jesus.

Chemical synthesis has become a great tool in exploring interesting structures such as natural products. However, this is not only limited into the natural products, the ultimate designed in miniaturisation can also be attained such as nanocar . Researchers from Houston, USA successfully created a new class of 2 nm-tall human-like, anthromorphic, compounds. This class of compound is dubbed as NanoPutians, after Liliputians from Jonathan Swift's classic Gulliver's Travel. The first edition of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travel  

Bartlett's oxidation of Xe using PtF 6   The noble gas compounds have been a great interest since the creation of its kind, XePtF 6 , in 1962. Since then, many xenon compounds with direct bonds to fluorine, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, xenon itself, and chlorine have been established. However, all these bonded atoms are electronegative main-group elements but there have been several indications that metal-xenon bonds can be formed and detected such as (CO) 5 Mo...Xe. Besides that, The Au-Xe + has been detected by mass spectroscopy and has been calculated with a best estimate for the bond distance of 257 pm. Researchers from Germany successfully created the first metal-xenon square planar compound with direct Au-Xe bond.

It was isolated for the first time in 1966 from the plant Rhazya stricta , strictamine (1)  has been a great interest due to its unique properties. Strictamine belongs to the group of akuammiline alkaloids which is the family of monoterpenoid indole alkaloids. This compound has been showed to inhibit the nuclear factor-𝜅B (NF-𝜅B), which plays an important role in immune and inflammatory responses. Apart from its bioactivity, strictamine has attracted synthetic chemists because its structure bearing a tricyclic unit of methanoquinolizidine. This interesting challenge causes only four groups - Garg (enantioselective), Zhu (racemic), Ohno (formal synthesis), and Gaich (formal synthesis) - have managed to complete a total synthesis of strictamine. This time on " Totally Synthesised" , we will see synthetic strategy by Gaich's group which used [2,3]-Stevens rearrangement to build the methanoquinolizidine unit.

In nature, self-assembly has been exploited in many ways to create molecular systems for biological processes. This idea has inspired many chemists in recent decade to use self-assembly to access various function of molecular level. However, there is a major difference between the synthetic and natural self-assembled systems. The synthetic self-assembly produces the most thermodynamically stable product. On the other hand, many natural self-assembly processes are energetically uphill and require a continuous consumption of energy to maintain its structure; this is referred as dissipative self assembly. The formation and dissociation of actin filament, one of the example dissipative self-assembly. (J. Baum, A. T. Papenfuss, B. Baum, T. P. Speed, and A. F. Cowman, Nature Rev. Microbiol. , 2006, 4 , 621-628) Recently, researchers from University of Padova successfully found a novel strategy for the dissipative vesicular structure that are stable to maintain its shape in the present ...

In biological process, molecular machines are one of the examples of the most intricate functional molecules and have been attracted many chemists recently. Inspired from this idea, synthetic molecular machines have been developed ranging from synthesizers to motors, but there are no synthetic molecule machines that operate autonomously using chemical energy; in biological process ATP is used as the chemical energy or fuel. One of the example of motor protein: ATP synthase. (J. Weber, Nat. Chem. Biol. , 2010, 6  794-795) Leigh's group from the University of Manchester successfully created a system in which small molecular ring is transported around a cyclic molecular track when powered by irreversible reaction.

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) has been a great interest due to their unique properties and those have motivated researchers to investigate their use in variety of application such as electrostatic discharge, structural reinforcement, and thermal dissipation. However, SWNT has main weakness that hinders the development of its application which is poor solubility and processibility. Many processing techniques and modification on the surface of nanotubes, either covalently or noncovalently, have been developed. Scanning tunnelling microscopy image of nanotubes. (T. W. Odom, J.-L. Huang, and C. M. Lieber, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter , 2002, 14 , R145-R167). Taton's group from University of Minnesota developed a way to encapsulate carbon nanotubes using crosslinked, amphiphilic copolymer micelles.