A Thioxanthone Sensitizer with a Chiral Phosphoric Acid Binding Site: Properties and Applications in Visible Light-Mediated Cycloadditions

A chiral phosphoric acid with a 2,2’-binaphthol core was prepared that displays two thioxanthone moieties at the 3,3’-position as light-harvesting antennas. Despite its relatively low triplet energy, the phosphoric acid was found to be an efficient catalyst for the enantioselective intermolecular [2+2] photocycloaddition of β-carboxyl-substituted cyclic enones (e.r. up to 93:7). Binding of the carboxylic acid to the sensitizer is suggested by NMR studies and by DFT calculations to occur by means of two hydrogen bonds. The binding event not only enables an enantioface differentiation but also modulates the triplet energy of the substrates.     

A HF Loaded Lewis-Acidic Aluminium Chlorofluoride for Hydrofluorination Reactions

The very strong Lewis acid aluminium chlorofluoride (ACF) was loaded with anhydrous HF. The interaction between the surface of the catalyst and HF was investigated using a variety of characterization methods, which revealed the formation of polyfluorides. Moreover, the reactivity of the HF-loaded ACF towards the hydrofluorination of alkynes was studied.     

Transition probabilities of Lévy‐type processes: Parametrix construction

We present an existence result for Lévy‐type processes which requires only weak regularity assumptions on the symbol with respect to the space variable x. Applications range from existence and uniqueness results for Lévy‐driven SDEs with Hölder continuous coefficients to existence results for stable‐like processes and Lévy‐type processes with symbols of variable order. Moreover, we obtain heat kernel estimates for a class of Lévy and Lévy‐type processes. The paper includes an extensive list of Lévy(‐type) processes satisfying the assumptions of our results.     

Single‐Molecule Methods to Study Membrane Receptor Oligomerization

Membrane receptors control fundamental cellular processes. Binding of a specific ligand to a receptor initiates communication through the membrane and activation of signaling cascades. This activation process often leads to a spatial rearrangement of receptors in the membrane at the molecular level. Single‐molecule techniques contributed significantly to the understanding of receptor organization and rearrangement in membranes. Here, we review four prominent single‐molecule techniques that have been applied to membrane receptors, namely, stepwise photobleaching, Förster resonance energy transfer, sub‐diffraction localization microscopy and co‐tracking. We discuss the requirements, benefits and limitations of each technique, discuss target labeling, present a selection of applications and results and compare the different methodologies.     

Orthogonal Olefination with Organogermanes

Reported herein is a fully orthogonal olefination, which involves the site- and E-selective coupling of aryl germanes with alkenes, tolerating otherwise widely employed coupling handles such as aromatic (pseudo)halogens (C−I, C−Br, C−Cl, C−F, C−OTf, C−OSO₂F), silanes and boronic acid derivatives as well as alternative functionalities. This unprecedented [Ge]-based oxidative Heck coupling proceeds at room temperature with high speed (10 min to 2 hours) and operational simplicity owing to its base-free and air-tolerant features.