In all the hubbub of attending a meeting last week, I forgot to point out that our August issue has gone live. This issue is jampacked with research, including the elucidation of enzyme endeavors, thiamin taken from treated turf, and Hsp90 and HuR having helpful or highly complicated roles in the cell (there are all your tongue-twisters for the month).

In addition, this issue includes several articles on high throughput screening, which are all free throughout August. In particular, a Commentary by Inglese, Shamu & Guy proposes guidelines for minimal information that should be included when reporting the results of small-molecule screens. For those of you involved in screening, what do you think of these suggestions? Is there anything you would do differently, or anything that's lacking? Finally, what other fields could benefit from a discussion of publication guidelines?

We'd be very interested to hear any feedback you all have about the issue via posts or email, and about these guidelines in particular. Until then, happy screening!

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

Posted by Catherine Goodman at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I blame it on my parents: I was born when my father was in his 3rd year of college and my mom in her 2nd year. I am told I used chemistry books as a pillow, toys, maybe even food. It turned indigestible, though. Very frustrating, but I developed high frustration tolerance, something an organic chemist really needs.

2. If you weren't a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be - and why?

I would be a sculptor. I would love to be one, actually, more and more. I don’t see a difference between a sculptor and an organic chemist sculpting from carbons, nitrogens, oxygens, etc. You just need an X-ray “diffractometer vision” to fully appreciate it. Otherwise, same thing.

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

This question almost implies that the most important impact a chemist has on the world is through his or her professional activities. I am, err, not sure that one makes the most impact by his work. To me that appears to be wishful thinking. Most chemists who are not blessed by inventing penicillin contribute best by being nice people, who are good examples for others, conscious of large problems (environment, global warming, energy situation) because they actually understand a little better these things than an average citizen. And, of course, for those of us who teach chemistry it is inspiring the future scientist, who will discover the new penicillin for sure! Why do I have the feeling I failed at this question?

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

That would be Carl Wilhelm Scheele, the discoverer of oxygen, nitrogen, manganese, molybdenum and tungsten and many other chemicals, including also chlorine (most likely before Sir Davy). The most surprising is, however, that he did all that without almost any professional training, as a small-town pharmacist! His talent and intuition must have been phenomenal - so the dinner would be a BLAST! I have one for you directly from the man himself:

“Oh, how happy I am! No care for eating or drinking or dwelling, no care for my pharmaceutical business, for this is mere play to me. But to watch new phenomena this is all my care, and how glad is the enquirer when discovery rewards his diligence; then his heart rejoices."

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab - and what was it?

This summer. Synthesis of dichlorotetrazine from guanidine and hydrazine… That explains why I did it myself.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

The most important book in the known universe, Winnie the Pooh! Duh! And as for a CD, that would be the Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. And a CD player with solar power cells, please!

Pavel Anzenbacher is a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at Bowling Green State University, OH, and works on the design and synthesis of photonic materials and investigates the photophysical processes as they relate to excited state energy migration and photonic energy processing. His group works on photonic materials focusing on optical sensing and organic electroluminescence (OLEDs).

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(ed's note: at the request of the GRC, this post has been removed.)

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

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(ed's note: at the request of the GRC, this post has been removed.)

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

Posted by Catherine Goodman at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(ed's note: at the request of the GRC, this post has been removed.)

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

Posted by Catherine Goodman at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

Pure curiosity – I have always wanted to be a scientist, but I kind of drifted to chemistry partly because biology seemed to be more about classification than science, and physics seemed unreal and only worked in special situations. Chemistry works, is messy, can be counted, and we can even help the physicists with some of our compounds which turn out to be quantum spin tubes now anyway as the result of some messy chemistry that’s being done in my laboratory…

2. If you weren't a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be - and why?

I really could not conceive of doing anything else – being allowed to do science and getting paid for it is amazing. If I had to do something else I would probably like to have a go at being an artist specialising in modern art or a mathematician. Both are very different but creative professions and are only constrained by the limits of one’s imagination.

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

By doing fundamental science and following our curiosity. I think that the pressure to do relevant things is so high nowadays that we risk completely missing some truly amazing discoveries that could change the world. Having said that, it is also becoming increasingly true that chemistry and chemists can help address some of the biggest issues facing us today – access to clean water, energy, global warming – in fact solving the energy problem and global warming appear to me to be one and the same thing. Why not set out to design a material that fixes carbon dioxide with water and drive the process with photons and then, hey presto, you have access to hydrocarbons to burn without the carbon dioxide hangover. Of course, nature has already been doing this for us, but we need to speed up the kinetics to produce hydrocarbons in real time as it were. Actually, I would favour making methanol since we could burn it and use it in fuel cells.

Chemistry can also help examine some of the most interesting problems in science today relating to complexity, emergent systems and even asking where we came from in terms of the origin of life. This is a big question – I think it may be possible to go from a chemical soup to primitive chemical cells that could be considered to be alive in a matter of a few hundred hours rather than millions / billions of years. I am also looking forward for the chemist / materials scientist than can produce infinitely long carbon nanotubes so we can make a space elevator, then we can all get to become a space tourist without the need for a big rocket.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

There are so many people I would like to have dinner with. Can I not just have a part in Bill and Ted’s excellent adventure and bring them all to my house for a dinner party using the phone box time machine? It would be interesting to see how Newton and Einstein would get on with each other.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab - and what was it?

A couple of weeks ago where I was trying to understand the self assembly of a nanoscale transition metal cluster using cryospray mass spectrometry – it was amazing since it worked. When I come into the lab normally my group dive for cover…

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

I would take Ben Okri’s The Famished Road – it’s an amazing book – I have read it many times and it is so rich I think I would never get bored of reading it. I am not sure what CD to take – maybe one that is reflective enough so I could signal to a passing vessel and get rescued from the island? If I had batteries or a solar panel for the CD player maybe I would take some Coldplay or some Philip Glass depending on my mood.

Lee Cronin is in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow and works on the design and assembly of complex functional molecules and materials and has interests in inorganic clusters, ligand design, complexity and emergence in chemistry.

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is my final blog from the RSC symposium on synthesis in organic chemistry, and it’s been great. The undoubted highlight came last night, when Ian Fleming (now an emeritus professor) gave a brilliant overview of his career, describing all the influences that culminated in his famous work on the use of silyl groups in organic synthesis.

Starting from his work as grad student, he presented the highs (and occasional lows) of his career with wit and candour. He began his working life in the 1950s, at a time when state-of-the-art spectroscopy meant IR and combustion analysis was often the linchpin of your analytical data. NMR had only just been invented and was only to be used “if you were desperate”, as he put it. And if you did get an NMR, you needed good eyesight, because the resulting spectra were smaller than dollar bills. Even a couple of decades later, 10 g of sample were still required for a carbon-13 NMR experiment.

It was a fascinating story, peppered with amusing anecdotes – for example, as a grad student, he had to cover all his samples with watch glasses, to stop his PhD supervisor from absent-mindedly tipping ash into them from his pipe. And it was fascinating to get the inside story of some of the historic achievements in organic chemistry – such as Woodward’s synthesis of vitamin B12.

Fleming spoke for 90 minutes and was rewarded with a standing ovation – not something that I’ve ever seen before at a chemistry conference. It was an evocative description of a bygone era, delivered by one of the last remaining gentleman chemists, and I felt privileged to witness it.

So, thumbs up to Cambridge. The next meeting in this series will be in two years time – I heartily recommend it, and I hope I’ll see you all there!

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by amitchinson at 08:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

WARNING! This blog entry contains a joke with chemical content! Those of a nervous disposition may want to look away.

For those who didn’t read my last entry, I’m currently at an RSC symposium on organic chemistry, held in Cambridge (UK, not MA). It’s traditional for UK conferences to be held at universities, apparently so the delegates can be shocked at the quality of the food. Last night was particularly cruel, because all the tables were laid out with wine glasses, creating an expectation of alcohol. Sadly, no wine was actually forthcoming, so the delegates had to face the evening lecture unfortified.

Still, we’ve had some cracking talks. Today, Varinder Aggarwal presented some powerful chemistry for homologating boronic esters; this allows carbon chains to be ‘grown’ with control over the relative and absolute stereochemistry. This work has yet to be published, but he reckons the paper will be ready later this year - so keep your eyes peeled.

Shu Kobayashi discussed various topics in catalysis, ranging from scandium complexes that enable carbon-carbon bond formations to be performed in water (click here for an example), to lab-on-a-chip hydrogenations that are performed in channels coated with polymer-encapsulated palladium. And Dean Toste gave an overview of his work on gold catalysis – a truly amazing lecture, delivered with such aplomb and rapidity that it was difficult to tell when he drew breath.

So who told the chemistry joke? It was Amos B. Smith III, at the evening lecture last night. Dithiane groups feature heavily in his work, and he was questioned about the best way of removing them. This prompted the following gag:

Why are there 32 methods for removing dithianes?
Because none of them work…

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

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I don’t seem to be having much luck at conferences recently. At the ACS meeting in Chicago earlier this year, I was given a hotel room without a bed. Yesterday, I turned up for an RSC symposium on organic synthesis and there wasn't even a room for me. At this rate, I’m assuming that when I arrive in Boston for the autumn ACS meeting I’ll discover that my hotel doesn’t exist.

Anyway, once the small issue of my accommodation was sorted out, I had a fun evening catching up with some familiar faces until very late in the night. I’m now experiencing that familiar conference feeling of being very tired but totally wired on coffee.

The lectures this morning kicked off in fine style with Steve Davies. You could hear the scratching of pens on paper coming from all around as he described lots of useful synthetic organic chemistry reactions (including an amazingly stereoselective variant of the Horner-Wadsworth-Emmons reaction – I’ll post the details of the paper once it gets published). Incidentally, I’ve commented before that chemists often seem to have splendid hair, but Steve’s must surely win all the prizes…

Another highlight was Ben List’s talk on new strategies in organocatalysis, including some very neat ideas on chiral Bronsted acid cataysis using phosphoric acid derivatives – see this paper for an example. Contributing to the truly international flavour of the symposium, Goverdhan Mehta from the Indian Institute of Science presented some of his total syntheses of biologically active natural products. Worryingly, he began by defending total synthesis, which he thinks is being marginalized – does anyone agree with him?

OK, that’s plenty for now, but I’ll update you on other interesting stuff tomorrow.

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

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1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I had a terrific chemistry teacher in high school, who let me do an independent study project. Also, my Pchem Professor in College was very good. I loved math and chemistry, but thought of them as two separate areas. When my Professor showed me that the two come together in theoretical chemistry, I was hooked!

2. If you weren't a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be - and why?

If I had the talent, rock star! But since I don't, I would have probably pursued statistics. That was my other consideration for graduate study. At the time, I was told that all statisticians could do was actuarial work, but there are so many new opportunities in informatics. I am happy to say I get to dabble a little now... in statistics, not as a rock star.

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

In my subfield, we work on teams with other scientists to develop new drug molecules. I think that is a very noble pursuit.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Maybe Howard Hughes. He was very gifted, and it is such a shame that treatments were not available to help him with his mental illness. For the same reason, maybe Abraham Lincoln. They had such great success while dealing with untreatable and, at times, debilitating illnesses.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab - and what was it?

A few months ago, I did some de novo structure-based design to improve a potential inhibitor of HIV-1 protease. A student has been using the design to run dynamics simulations. We are completing the paper now.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

The CD would have to be U2’s “The Joshua Tree” or the Black Crowes "Shake Your Moneymaker". Classics! The book would have to be a photo album of my family. I would miss my husband and son very much.

Heather Carlson is in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and works on theoretical chemistry and computational modeling of protein-ligand interactions. She studies bioinformatics, the basic biophysics of molecular recognition, and applied drug discovery.

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Posted on behalf of Mushy:

At Uni, I was never one for the Thursday afternoon seminar from a guest speaker. As a presentation snob, I resented the often shoddy slides on show, and to be perfectly honest, I just don't get biochemistry. All in all, this meant that I had no desire to be at about 50 % of the seminars on offer, but as a member of Rent-a-Crowd, that wasn't an option I had.

After much moping, a friend and I decided to liven up the seminars with a game of Buzzword Bingo. The premise was simple. Each participant bought a ticket upon which a number of buzzwords were printed. Each ticket contained a random selection of 15 buzzwords from a pool of forty. Whenever the buzzword was mentioned, it got crossed off of the player's ticket. At the end of the seminar, the person with the most correct buzzwords ticked off won the pool of entrance money. As a gesture of altruism - and naiveté - the house kept no money.

It all started as a terribly amusing ruse. The generation of the buzzword pool immediately became something of a problem, though. After selecting pleasantries such as "Thank you", "honour", and "pleasure", adding a couple of colours, and then throwing in a few wildcards such as "lettuce" and "flounder", we were left with about 20-30 buzzwords which we still had to fill. To make up this shortfall with likely suggestions, this meant that my friend and I actually had to read some of the speaker's papers before the lecture, and produce candidates from there.

With the buzzword list complete, selling the tickets proved to be the easy part; the easily-bored graduate student will do just about anything to alleviate the tedium of sitting through the most interminable of lectures. Then the strangest thing started happening. Each Thursday, a few more people turned up. When we were in the seminars, the back half of the room - the traditional seating area of the graduate student - was actually paying attention throughout the duration of the lecture. We even encouraged the graduate students to ask questions, as it was well within the rules to try to lead the guest lecturer into saying one of your buzzwords, no matter how contrived the set-up. I was even reading a bit more of the literature!

If we ever got found out (I think that the senior faculty started getting wind of our scheme when we started selling them tickets), I already had my defense arranged. As a noble gesture, my friend and I had done what no threat from the faculty had yet achieved. Attendances were up, and the students were attentive throughout, and asking many - sometimes strangely-worded - questions of the speaker at the conclusion.

The only negative thing was that after a few years of paper-reading and attention-paying, I still don't understand biochem...

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 02:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I thought I'd present my thoughts to you in a slightly more formal way today. Thus, my attempt at a manuscript in blog format:

Protons are interesting
C.M. Goodman

Abstract: Protons are bizarre little things, aren't they?

Introduction: This train of thought started when I spotted this interesting paper in JACS from Hans-Heinrich Limbach and colleagues about figuring out what protons are doing in enzyme active sites. In particular, they use an aprotic solvent system as a model to figure out how the pKa of the NH in the pyridine ring of PLP (basically vitamin B6) is affected by an intermolecular (protein to PLP) hydrogen bond. The lack of water in both the alternate solvent system and the active site, then, similarly serve to modulate the pKa of the hydrogen.

Introduction part 2: The additional fuel for this thought process comes from another great teacher I had, Craig Martin, who taught one of my graduate school classes on biomolecular structure. In one of the first classes, he asked us, "Why does DNA form a double helix?" He let us go on and on about the base stacking, and the specific hydrogen bonds that form between the complimentary base pairs, etc., and then finally told us that it's all because of water (and the entropy thereof). Base stacking could still happen without a duplex, and the bases could form hydrogen bonds with water molecules, but the good ol' H2O would be restricted, and so the double helix is better for all involved.

Results: uh... I've got nothing.

Discussion: This paper and Dr. Martin's wise words got me thinking about how little I really think about protons and water, and thus sent my train of thought into a station I like to call 'What's going on there?' Aside from people who are really 100% focused on what water is doing (i.e., what the structure of water is, etc.), and that alternate group of people who are doing insanely water-sensitive reactions (and thus have to worry about water ALL THE TIME), how much do you all really think about how water is affecting the surface of your protein, or the conformational equilibria of peptides or natural products, or so on? What other scenarios require an all out consideration of water? And how will uncovering the structure of water change the way that we think about this topic, or it is so specific for each case that we'll always be searching for a better understanding of water? Finally, what are the best (or at least your favorite) ways to track down what protons are doing?

Conclusion: Ok - all this talk of water has gotten me really thirsty. I'm off to the water fountain...

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

Posted by Catherine Goodman at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One thing that really irritates me is badly drawn ChemDraw structures (maybe I should get out more...).

Anyway, there is no excuse for a benzene ring not being a perfect hexagon - unless of course you’re showing perspective or drawing a fullerene or nanotube. Double and triple bonds should be well separated so that they don’t just look like thick bonds. And as for angles... unless there’s a really good reason for it not to be 120 or 180 degrees (depending on the hybridisation flavour of your [carbon] atoms), then there is likely something wrong; in flatland, even your sp3 centres should be 120 degrees unless you're showing the stereochemistry and need to draw all four bonds. Atom labels should be in a consistent font (preferably Helvetica) and should be of a size that does not require one to use some kind of electron microscope to read them.

Simple really... so why do a lot of ChemDraw structures that appear in papers or on slides at conferences look like a six-year old has drawn them with a crayon (and I mean a particularly untalented six-year old at that - one that probably wouldn't even win a Blue Peter drawing competition)? I think it’s just people being lazy...

I’ve been to a couple of conferences in the last month and gasped in horror (that may be a slight exaggeration) at some of the representations of C60 I’ve seen. Somewhat annoying is when the double bonds are drawn inside the pentagonal rings - please, can everyone just agree from now on to put them in the six-membered rings (surely it makes more sense that way?) . When I confronted one speaker about the ChemDraw crimes they had perpetrated, I was told that they’d just used the template... - and yes, it turns out that some of the C60 structures in the template library have dubious patterns of bonding...

Even worse, I see the occasional 5- and 6-bonded carbon atoms in fullerenes (and pyrene seems to fall into that trap as well). Maybe it shouldn’t get under my skin as much as it does, but this is how organic chemists communicate - and wrong is wrong. You wouldn’t use ‘2’ in an equation if it called for the square root of 2, so let’s be a bit more careful about our structures.

Right, soap-box carefully stowed away now for another day...

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 06:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I didn’t choose chemistry, chemistry chose me. I know it sounds a bit corny, but at high school chemistry was the only thing that came naturally.

2. If you weren't a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be - and why?

I have no idea what I would do. One dimensional? Not me! Come to think of it I wouldn’t mind owning a whisky distillery, which of course would have to be Scottish.

3. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Robert the Bruce. Why? I would love to hear him tell his story. Alternatively one person who would just be fun to hang out with (based on the stories) would be Rabbie (Robert) Burns, you have to remember I am Scottish, so that probably has a lot to do with these choices.

4. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab - and what was it?

About six years ago. One of my colleagues Chris Weder and myself went into the lab to see if we could use diimide reduction to convert poly(p-phenylene ethynylene)s to poly(p-xylene). It was an easy reaction and it worked first time! We published the paper in Macromolecules soon after.

5. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

This is a difficult one as my choices change depending on my mood. At the moment I would pick a Radiohead CD, probably ‘the bends’. My book would be ‘Survive on a Desert Island’, this is probably not what you're asking but I would need all the help I can get if I was going to survive long enough to listen to ‘the bends’. If I wasn’t allowed to take that book I would probably take “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins and hope my genes were selfish enough to help me stay alive.

Stuart Rowan is in the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University and works on utilizing non-covalent interactions to access new responsive and dynamic supramolecular polymers and materials. Using this concept his group works in a diverse range of areas including biomaterials, metal-containing polymers for sensors and optical materials, surface organized nanoscaffolds and re-healable plastics.

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 06:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Like many in the US, I spent yesterday evening watching an impressive display of fireworks to celebrate our independence day. Even though I'm a chemist, I've spent surprisingly little time thinking about how fireworks are made, or how all those swirly patterns are produced (although this site was really interesting). It got me thinking, though; how and when do people decide that they want to devote their life to making fireworks? Are they analytical chemists who want to do something more with the sodium D-line than measure it? Are they inorganic chemists who get tired of just making compounds and then storing them in the freezer? Were they encouraged by their high school guidance counselor to explore their passion for exploding things? (we had a similar conversation in the office about the thought process involved in becoming a professional eater like the folks who competed yesterday in the Coney Island hot dog eating competition...)

In recent years, my favorite fireworks have been the ones that look like Saturn - you know, the big globes with the rings around them (although I doubt Saturn is as brightly colored). My least favorite fireworks, until last night, were the 'maroon' shells - the ones that just explode as a dot of light but with an incredible noise. However, as much as I value my hearing, those annoying fireworks have been supplanted by a new and creepy design. I'm not sure of the name, but the explosion results in a bunch of white starry things, which then veer off in directions that make no sense according to the original trajectory. It made me think I was looking at either a) UFOs or b) (and more disturbingly) a bacterial swarm assay. Yuck. I apologize to the person who must have spent 5 years developing these, but I am not a fan.

In any case, now that we have fireworks that look like E. coli, we need to get some chemistry into the patterns (aside from the fact that the whole thing is based on chemistry, obviously...). What about a giant TLC plate where spots develop? Or a beaker-shaped outline of lights?

What would your fireworks look like if you were a fireworks-ician (fireworks-alist? fireworks-ist?)

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

Posted by Catherine Goodman at 06:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Everyone reach for your iPod (or generic mp3 player) - the most chemistry entertainment you're likely to hear today is now available in the guise of the Nature chemistry podcast. Clear the fluff from your ears and check it out here.

In this issue Gareth Mitchell takes at closer look at how our eyes work, with the help of carbon nanotubes; the chemistry blogosphere is deconstructed; and Harry Kroto explains why he thinks the British government is killing UK science. We also have a special report from Fraser Stoddart's 65th birthday party.

The blogging feature has already created a reaction with this post on The Chem Blog, and here at carbon-based curiosities.

The Chempod is the first in a series, next time comes all the gossip from the ACS fall meeting.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was looking through recent literature this past week and found a few things in JACS that I thought were particularly interesting.

The first comes from Kelly Damm and Heather Carlson, and substantiates my feeling that NMR is the coolest technique ever invented. In this case, they were trying to figure out the best way to incorporate protein flexibility into structure-based drug design. The authors previously established an MD method to generate multiple protein conformations of a single protein; the resultant ensemble worked better in assigning known inhibitors or non-inhibitors appropriately than a static structure. But all those calculations take a lot of time, and so Damm and Carlson went to the pdb, pulling out 90 static structures of HIV-1 protease (bound to a variety of ligands) and one NMR structure, which is actually an ensemble of 28 structures. What they discovered is that the success of these two ensembles was quite similar in identifying inhibitors, but that the NMR structure was less specific to a given ligand and so was more able to identify the essential features of the ligand and extrapolate to new classes of compounds. So, they suggest NMR structures as useful tools for SBDD. Go NMR!

Two communications also caught my eye: one, from Scott Miller's group, extends his work on small, peptide-based catalysts to an Asp-catalyzed asymmetric epoxidation. In this case, putting the Asp carboxylate into a protected tripeptide known to form beta-turns resulted in a catalyst that could turn over nearly 20 times, with 97% yield and 92% ee in optimized conditions. He wrote a nice review on the rationale for this work now three years ago, but I would still recommend it. The second is work from John Klassen's lab: Amidst the ongoing controversy of what gas-phase analysis of proteins really means, they seem to have put together a nice method for monitoring ligand binding sites, and determining whether the sites are identical (linear slope of ligand released over time and temperature) or not (non-linear slope).

Well, that's my weekend reading. Now back to watching Wimbledon...

(ed's note: Dr. Carlson alerted me to the fact that the study was actually about HIV protease, which I fixed 07/05)

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

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