Enhanced Light‐Harvesting Capacity by Micellar Assembly of Free Accessory Chromophores and LH1‐like Antennas

Biohybrid light‐harvesting antennas are an emerging platform technology with versatile tailorability for solar‐energy conversion. These systems combine the proven peptide scaffold unit utilized for light harvesting by purple photosynthetic bacteria with attached synthetic chromophores to extend solar coverage beyond that of the natural systems. Herein, synthetic unattached chromophores are employed that partition into the organized milieu (e.g. detergent micelles) that house the LH1‐like biohybrid architectures. The synthetic chromophores include a hydrophobic boron‐dipyrrin dye (A1) and an amphiphilic bacteriochlorin (A2), which transfer energy with reasonable efficiency to the bacteriochlorophyll acceptor array (B875) of the LH1‐like cyclic oligomers. The energy‐transfer efficiencies are markedly increased upon covalent attachment of a bacteriochlorin (B1 or B2) to the peptide scaffold, where the latter likely acts as an energy‐transfer relay site for the (potentially diffusing) free chromophores. The efficiencies are consistent with a Förster (through‐space) mechanism for energy transfer. The overall energy‐transfer efficiency from the free chromophores via the relay to the target site can approach those obtained previously by relay‐assisted energy transfer from chromophores attached at distant sites on the peptides. Thus, the use of free accessory chromophores affords a simple design to enhance the overall light‐harvesting capacity of biohybrid LH1‐like architectures.     

Cold-Active Xylanase Produced by Fungi Associated with Antarctic Marine Sponges

Despite their potential biotechnological applications, cold-active xylanolytic enzymes have been poorly studied. In this work, 38 fungi isolated from marine sponges collected in King George Island, Antarctica, were screened as new sources of cold-active xylanases. All of them showed xylanase activity at 15 and 23 °C in semiquantitative plate assays. One of these isolates, Cladosporium sp., showed the highest activity and was characterized in detail. Cladosporium sp. showed higher xylanolytic activity when grown on beechwood or birchwood xylan and wheat bran, but wheat straw and oat bran were not so good inducers of this activity. The optimal pH for xylanase activity was 6.0, although pH stability was slightly wider (pH 5–7). On the other hand, Cladosporium sp. showed high xylanase activity at low temperatures and very low thermal stability. Interestingly, thermal stability was even lower after culture media were removed and replaced by buffer, suggesting that low molecular component(s) of the culture media could be important in the stabilization of cold-active xylanase activity. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first report on extracellular xylanase production by fungi associated with Antarctic marine sponges.     

Palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of tricyclopropylbismuth with aryl halides and triflates

The palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of tricyclopropylbismuth with aryl and heterocyclic halides and triflates is reported. The reaction tolerates numerous functional groups and does not require anhydrous conditions. The method was successfully extended to the cross-coupling of triethylbismuth.     

Intermolecular hydroaminations via strained (E)-cycloalkenes

A photoinduced procedure for the intermolecular hydroamination of alkenes using azoles is described. This reaction occurs in modest to good yield for 6- and 7-membered cyclic alkenes. Upon irradiation at 254 nm in the presence of methyl benzoate and a small amount of triflic acid as an additive (20 mol %), imidazoles, pyrazoles, triazoles, and tetrazole can react with the alkene to afford complex Markovnikov adducts. The proposed mechanism involves photoisomerization to generate highly strained (E)-cycloalkene intermediates and (E)-cycloalkene protonation followed by reaction with the azole nucleophile. Alkene isomerization was found to be a competing side reaction under these conditions.     

Theoretical studies of Pt-Ti nanoparticles for potential use as PEMFC electrocatalysts

A theoretical investigation is presented of alloying platinum with titanium to form binary Pt-Ti nanoalloys as an alternative to the expensive pure platinum catalysts commonly used for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell cathode electrocatalysts. Density Functional Theory calculations are performed to investigate compositional effects on structural properties as well as Oxygen Reduction Reaction kinetics and poisoning effects. High symmetry A(32)-B(6) clusters are studied to investigate structural properties. From these structures binding energies of hydroxyl and carbon monoxide are studied on a range of sites on the surface of the clusters. Promising results are obtained suggesting that the bimetallic Pt-Ti nanoalloys may exhibit enhanced properties compared to pure platinum catalysts.     

Enantioselective palladium-catalyzed [3 + 2] cycloadditions of trimethylenemethane with nitroalkenes

Nitroalkenes readily undergo palladium-catalyzed [3 + 2] cycloaddition with trimethylenemethane to generate nitrocyclopentanes in excellent yield and enantioselectivity. Furthermore, the products thus formed are highly versatile synthetic intermediates and provide convenient access to both cyclopentylamines and cyclopentenones.     

The group of invariants of an inner function with finite spectrum

This paper determines the group of continuous invariants corresponding to an inner function Θ with finitely many singularities on the unit circle $\mathbb{T}$; that is, the continuous mappings $g:\mathbb{T}\to \mathbb{T}$ such that $\Theta °g=\Theta$ on $\mathbb{T}$. These mappings form a group under composition.     

Correlation of the Solubilizing Abilities of 1-Butyl-1-methylpiperidinium Bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide and 1-Butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium Tetracyanoborate

Chromatographic retention data were measured for a wide range of organic solutes on 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium tetracyanoborate ([BMPyrr]⁺[B(CN)₄]^?) and 1-butyl-1-methyl-piperidinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide ([BMPip]⁺[Tf₂N]^?) stationary phases at 323 K and 353 K. The measured retention factors were combined with published infinite dilution activity coefficient and gas-to-water partition coefficient data to yield gas-to-anhydrous ionic liquid (IL) and water-to-anhydrous IL partition coefficients. Both sets of partition coefficients were analyzed using the Abraham model. The derived Abraham model correlations describe the observed gas-to-IL (log₁₀ K) and water-to-IL (log₁₀ P) partition coefficient data to within average standard deviations of about 0.10 and 0.15 log₁₀ units, respectively.     

Biohybrid photosynthetic antenna complexes for enhanced light-harvesting

Biohybrid antenna systems have been constructed that contain synthetic chromophores attached to 31mer analogues of the bacterial photosynthetic core light-harvesting (LH1) β-polypeptide. The peptides are engineered with a Cys site for bioconjugation with maleimide-terminated chromophores, which include synthetic bacteriochlorins (BC1, BC2) with strong near-infrared absorption and commercial dyes Oregon green (OGR) and rhodamine red (RR) with strong absorption in the blue-green to yellow-orange regions. The peptides place the Cys 14 (or 6) residues before a native His site that binds bacteriochlorophyll a (BChl-a) and, like the native LH proteins, have high helical content as probed by single-reflection IR spectroscopy. The His residue associates with BChl-a as in the native LH1 β-polypeptide to form dimeric ββ-subunit complexes [31mer(-14Cys)X/BChl](2), where X is one of the synthetic chromophores. The native-like BChl-a dimer has Q(y) absorption at 820 nm and serves as the acceptor for energy from light absorbed by the appended synthetic chromophore. The energy-transfer characteristics of biohybrid complexes have been characterized by steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence and absorption measurements. The quantum yields of energy transfer from a synthetic chromophore located 14 residues from the BChl-coordinating His site are as follows: OGR (0.30) < RR (0.60) < BC2 (0.90). Oligomeric assemblies of the subunit complexes [31mer(-14Cys)X/BChl](n) are accompanied by a bathochromic shift of the Q(y) absorption of the BChl-a oligomer as far as the 850-nm position found in cyclic native photosynthetic LH2 complexes. Room-temperature stabilized oligomeric biohybrids have energy-transfer quantum yields comparable to those of the dimeric subunit complexes as follows: OGR (0.20) < RR (0.80) < BC1 (0.90). Thus, the new biohybrid antennas retain the energy-transfer and self-assembly characteristics of the native antenna complexes, offer enhanced coverage of the solar spectrum, and illustrate a versatile paradigm for the construction of artificial LH systems.