Two human subjects were given separate oral doses of sodium [2H6]isobutyrate and [methyl-2H3]thymine and the labelling patterns of urinary metabolites were determined. Ingestion of deuterated isobutyrate resulted in the excretion of 2H5-labelled S-3-hydroxyisobutyric acid, formed on the direct catabolic pathway, and of S- and R-[2H4]-3-hydroxyisobutyric acids, formed by the reduction of S- and ...

Ti(IV)-salan 4 catalyzes the diastereo- and enantioselective monoepoxidation of conjugated dienes using 30% H2O2 at rt or below even in the presence of other olefins and adjacent stereocenters. Its enantiomer, ent-4, provides access to the opposite diastereomer or enantiomer. The resultant chiral allylic epoxides, and the triols derived from them, are versatile synthetic intermediates as well a...

In vitro selection experiments have produced nucleic acid ligands (aptamers) that bind tightly and specifically to a great variety of target biomolecules. The utility of aptamers is often limited by their vulnerability to nucleases present in biological materials. One way to circumvent this problem is to select an aptamer that binds the enantiomer of the target, then synthesize the enantiomer o...

Chiral domains have been prepared by evaporation of a two-dimensionally chiral molecule, naphtho[2,3-a]pyrene (NP), onto the hexagonal Au(111) surface in an ultrahigh vacuum environment. High-resolution UHV scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) showed that NP formed chiral domains consisting of only one 2D enantiomer rather than racemic two-dimensional unit cells. A structural model is proposed t...

A simple strategy for choosing optimal bio-supramolecular mediators from the mammalian serum albumin library is proposed for bimolecular photochirogenic reactions. Thus, the enantiodifferentiating photocyclodimerization of 2-anthracencecarboxylate (AC) was optimized in chemical and optical yields, when mediated by porcine and canine serum albumins, both of which bound two AC molecules in the fi...

The bacterial phosphotriesterase has been shown to catalyze the stereoselective hydrolysis of phosphinate esters. The wild-type enzyme preferentially hydrolyzes the SP-enantiomers of methyl phenyl p-X-phenylphosphinate esters by 3 orders of magnitude. The mutant enzyme, I106T/F132A/H254G/H257W, exhibits the opposite stereoselectivity and hydrolyzes the RP-enantiomer up to 30 times faster than t...