Lighting Up the Plasma Membrane: Development and Applications of Fluorescent Ligands for Transmembrane Proteins

Despite the fact that transmembrane proteins represent the main therapeutic targets for decades, complete and in-depth knowledge about their biochemical and pharmacological profiling is not fully available. In this regard, target-tailored small-molecule fluorescent ligands are a viable approach to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. Such tools, coupled with the ability of high-precision optical techniques to image with an unprecedented resolution at a single-molecule level, helped unraveling many of the conundrums related to plasma proteins’ life-cycle and druggability. Herein, we review the recent progress made during the last two decades in fluorescent ligand design and potential applications in fluorescence microscopy of voltage-gated ion channels, ligand-gated ion channels and G-coupled protein receptors.     

Dependence of electrical performance on structural organization in polymer field effect transistors

Organic semiconductors (OSCs) are strong contenders for use in printed, flexible electronics. Although organic electronic materials have been studied for many years, the physics of charge transport is still under investigation. This is in part due to variability resulting from the large variety of molecules that can be synthesized and inconsistency in electrical characterization due to device and processing conditions. Molecular ordering in OSCs is known to alter the charge transport characteristics and attention to long range and short range ordering provides clues as to the nature of transport pathways. Here, we study ordered regioregular poly(3‐hexylthiophene‐2,5‐diyl) films carefully prepared to obtain a set of three samples with incrementally increasing order on identical transistor architectures. Ordering was characterized using a variety of short and long range techniques to probe the coherence and number of crystallites formed during processing, and the correlation between these different measures of order are quantified. We observe three changes in transistor behavior that show a shift from non‐ideal to more textbook‐like characteristics with increasing order: reduction of the contact resistance, shift to field‐independent mobility, and a shift from a diode‐like (S‐shaped) to linear response at low lateral fields. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2017 , 55, 1063–1074     

The Role of Ate Complexes in the Copper‐Mediated Trifluoromethylation of Alkynes

Trifluoromethylation reactions have recently received increased attention because of the beneficial effect of the trifluoromethyl group on the pharmacological properties of numerous substances. A common method to introduce the trifluoromethyl group employs the Ruppert–Prakash reagent, that is, Si(CH₃)₃CF₃, together with a copper(I) halide. We have applied this method to the trifluoromethylation of aromatic alkynes and used electrospray‐ionization mass spectrometry to investigate the mechanism of these reactions in tetrahydrofuran, dichloromethane, and acetonitrile as well as with and without added 1,10‐phenanthroline. In the absence of the alkyne component, the homoleptic ate complexes [Cu(CF₃)₂]^? and [Cu(CF₃)₄]^? were observed. In the presence of the alkynes RH, the heteroleptic complexes [Cu(CF₃)₃R]^? were detected as well. Upon gas‐phase fragmentation, these key intermediates released the cross‐coupling products R?CF₃ with perfect selectivity. Apparently, the [Cu(CF₃)₃R]^? complexes did not originate from homoleptic cuprate anions, but from unobservable neutral precursors. The present results moreover point to the involvement of oxygen as the oxidizing agent.     

Predicting the tautomeric equilibrium of acetylacetone in solution. I. The right answer for the wrong reason?

This study investigates how the various components (method, basis set, and treatment of solvent effects) of a theoretical approach influence the relative energies between keto and enol forms of acetylacetone, which is an important model system to study the solvent effects on chemical equilibria from experiment and theory. The computations show that the most popular density functional theory (DFT) approaches, such as B3LYP overestimate the stability of the enol form with respect to the keto form by ～10 kJ mol^?1, whereas the very promising SCS‐MP2 approach is underestimating it. MP2 calculations indicate that in particular the basis set size is crucial. The Dunning Huzinaga double ζ basis (D95z(d,p)) used in previous studies overestimates the stability of the keto form considerably as does the popular split‐valence plus polarization (SVP) basis. Bulk properties of the solvent included by continuum approaches strongly stabilize the keto form, but they are not sufficient to reproduce the reversal in stabilities measured by low‐temperature nuclear magnetic resonance experiments in freonic solvents. Enthalpic and entropic effects further stabilize the keto form, however, the reversal is only obtained if also molecular effects are taken into account. Such molecular effects seem to influence only the energy difference between the keto and the enol forms. Trends arising due to variation in the dielectric constant of the solvent result from bulk properties of the solvent, i.e., are already nicely described by continuum approaches. As such this study delivers a deep insight into the abilities of various approaches to describe solvent effects on chemical equilibria. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem, 2010