Merging of confocal and caging technologies: selective three-color communication with profluorescent reporters

Falling apart, on cue: Signaling pathways often display a profound spatiotemporal component that is best studied using light-activatable reagents. Three separate photolabile moieties that can be distinguished based upon their response to three distinct wavelengths (360, 440, and 560?nm) have been synthesized and evaluated. This tri-color system is also applied to imaging in microwells and HeLa cells (see picture).     

Carbon(sp(3) )Fluorine Bond-Forming Reductive Elimination from Palladium(IV) Complexes

Pd(IV) -fluoride complexes, some of which are remarkably insensitive to water, have been synthesized and used in the title reaction, which proceeds with high selectivity to give the product of the C(sp(3) )?F coupling (see scheme, TfO=trifluoromethanesulfonate). Preliminary mechanistic studies implicate a pathway involving dissociation of pyridine followed by direct C?F coupling at the Pd center.     

Metal-cation-based anion exchange membranes

Here we present the first metal-cation-based anion exchange membranes (AEMs), which were synthesized by copolymerization and cross-linking of a norbornene monomer functionalized with a water-soluble bis(terpyridine)ruthenium(II) complex and dicyclopentadiene. Each ruthenium complex has two associated counteranions, unlike most ammonium- and phosphonium-based membranes with single cation-anion pairs. The resulting AEMs show anion conductivities and mechanical properties comparable to those of traditional quaternary-ammonium-based AEMs as well as good alkaline stability and methanol tolerance. These results suggest that metal-cation-based polymers hold promise as a new class of materials for anion-conducting applications.     

A slowly relaxing rigid biradical for efficient dynamic nuclear polarization surface-enhanced NMR spectroscopy: expeditious characterization of functional group manipulation in hybrid materials

A new nitroxide-based biradical having a long electron spin-lattice relaxation time (T(1e)) has been developed as an exogenous polarization source for DNP solid-state NMR experiments. The performance of this new biradical is demonstrated on hybrid silica-based mesostructured materials impregnated with 1,1,2,2-tetrachloroethane radical containing solutions, as well as in frozen bulk solutions, yielding DNP enhancement factors (ε) of over 100 at a magnetic field of 9.4 T and sample temperatures of ~100 K. The effects of radical concentration on the DNP enhancement factors and on the overall sensitivity enhancements (Σ(?)) are reported. The relatively high DNP efficiency of the biradical is attributed to an increased T(1e), which enables more effective saturation of the electron resonance. This new biradical is shown to outperform the polarizing agents used so far in DNP surface-enhanced NMR spectroscopy of materials, yielding a 113-fold increase in overall sensitivity for silicon-29 CPMAS spectra as compared to conventional NMR experiments at room temperature. This results in a reduction in experimental times by a factor >12,700, making the acquisition of (13)C and (15)N one- and two-dimensional NMR spectra at natural isotopic abundance rapid (hours). It has been used here to monitor a series of chemical reactions carried out on the surface functionalities of a hybrid organic-silica material.     

Sizing of Reverse Micelles in Microemulsions using NMR Measurements of Diffusion

This paper reports the size of reverse micelles (RMs) in AOT/octane/H(2)O and CTAB/hexanol/H(2)O microemulsions using magnetic resonance (MR) pulsed field gradient (PFG) measurements of diffusion. Diffusion data were measured using the pulsed gradient stimulated echo (PGSTE) experiment for surfactant molecules residing in the RM interface. Inverse Laplace transformation of these data generated diffusion coefficients for the RMs, which were converted into hydrodynamic radii using the Stokes-Einstein relation. This technique is complementary to those previously used to size RMs, such as dynamic light scattering (DLS) and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), but also offers several advantages, which are discussed. RM sizes, determined using the PGSTE method, in the AOT (sodium bis(2-ethylhexyl) sulfosuccinate) and CTAB (cetyltrimethylammonium bromide) microemulsions were compared with previous DLS and SAXS data, showing good agreement. Methods for determining number distributions from the PGSTE data, through the use of scaling factors, were investigated.     

Relative size selection of a conjugated polyelectrolyte in virus-like protein structures

A conjugated polyelectrolyte poly[(2-methoxy-5-propyloxy sulfonate)-phenyl-ene vinylene] (MPS-PPV) drives the assembly of virus capsid proteins to form single virus-like particles (VLPs) and aggregates with more than two VLPs, with a relative selection of high molecular weight polymer in the latter.     

Toward biodegradable nanogel star polymers via organocatalytic ROP

Organocatalytic ring opening polymerization (OROP) is used to effect the rapid, scalable, room temperature formation of size-controlled, highly uniform, polyvalent, nanogel star polymer nanoparticles of biodegradable composition.     

ChemInform Abstract: 2Mg(OH)2·MgCl2·2H2O and 2Mg(OH)2·MgCl2·4H2O,Two High Temperature Phases of the Magnesia Cement System.

The title materials exist as stable phases in the MgO—MgCl₂—H₂O system at 120 °C.