Salt-bridges ubiquitously form between oppositely charged moieties in proteins. Here we quantify changes in population of salt-bridged β-hairpin peptides due to added salt, and determine the thermodynamic driving forces and cooperativity of salt-bridge formation under these conditions. We find only a fraction of salt-bridged folded conformations at physiologically relevant salt concentrations.

A new PCP-type ligand based on an N-heterocyclic olefin (NHO) scaffold has been prepared. The flexibility of this ligand, which is able to adopt facial coordination modes in Ir(I) or meridional in Ir(III) complexes, can be attributed to the dual nature (ylide-olefin) of the NHO scaffold. This results in a rare case of olefin "slippage" that is supported by X-ray crystallography and DFT calculat...

The versatile nucleophilic organic catalysts N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) have been shown to effectively mediate the transesterification of phosphorus esters under mild conditions; user-friendly imidazolium salts can also be employed as pre-catalysts.

An efficient and straight forward procedure for the syntheses of bicyclic isoxazole/isoxazoline derivatives from the corresponding dimethyl-2-(2-nitro-1-aryl/alkyl)-2-(prop-2-yn-1yl)malonates or dimethyl 2-allyl-2-(2-nitro-1-aryl/alkyl ethyl)malonate is described. High yields and simple operations are important features of this methodology.

A series of chiral 6-membered ring N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) precursors based on 3,4-dihydro-quinazoline were synthesized with overall yields of 54-62%. NHCs generated from these precursors show excellent asymmetric catalytic properties for borylation of α,β-unsaturated esters with enantioselectivity of up to 93% with a catalyst content of only 1 mol%.

The photophysical properties of a series of dithienylethenes, free or blocked in an ideal photoactive conformation by an alkyl bridge, have been investigated by stationary, ultrafast spectroscopy and state-of-the-art time-dependent density functional theory calculations. Thanks to the clear ultrafast transient signatures corroborating NMR results, we bring strong evidence that the unreactive pa...

A diastereoselective access to β-lactam fused spirocyclic oxindoles and related compounds bearing all carbon spiro centers is described. This N-heterocyclic carbene-catalyzed process employed challenging β,β-disubstituted α,β-unsaturated imines to react with enals.

Organocatalytic activation of readily available substrates has led to the rapid development of many enantioselective reactions in the last decade. In N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) catalysis, reactions of enals with enones or enone derivatives have been extensively investigated and are reported to undergo a diverse set of transformations based on the catalytically generated enolate and homoenolat...