SbCl5-wet acetonitrile: a new system for chemoselective O-desilylation

A new efficient method for deprotection of TBDMS derivatives of phenols, primary alcohols, carboxylic acids and secondary amines, consisting of SbCl₅ and MeCN with 0.1% water (w/v), is reported. It effects inter alia desilylation of a CH₂OTBDMS group in the presence of a ketal function.     

Hydrolysis of chemically distinct sites of human serum albumin by polyoxometalate: A hybrid QM/MM (ONIOM) study

In this study, mechanisms of hydrolysis of all four chemically diverse cleavage sites of human serum albumin (HSA) by [Zr(OH)(PW₁₁O₃₉)]⁴⁻ (ZrK) have been investigated using the hybrid two-layer QM/MM (ONIOM) method. These reactions have been proposed to occur through the following two mechanisms: internal attack (IA) and water assisted (WA). In both mechanisms, the cleavage of the peptide bond in the Cys392-Glu393 site of HSA is predicted to occur in the rate-limiting step of the mechanism. With the barrier of 27.5 kcal/mol for the hydrolysis of this site, the IA mechanism is found to be energetically more favorable than the WA mechanism (barrier = 31.6 kcal/mol). The energetics for the IA mechanism are in line with the experimentally measured values for the cleavage of a wide range of dipeptides. These calculations also suggest an energetic preference (Cys392-Glu393, Ala257-Asp258, Lys313-Asp314, and Arg114-Leu115) for the hydrolysis of all four sites of HSA. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Total Synthesis of Macrocyclic Dysoxylactam A

The total synthesis of dysoxylactam A, a novel 17‐membered macrolactam with potent multi‐drug‐resistant reversing activities, has been achieved, starting from 4‐pentene‐1‐al in a longest linear sequence of 17 steps and 9.5% overall yield. The key transformations consist of iterative aldol and ring‐closing metathesis reactions for the construction of the stereochemically enriched polypropionate scaffold and the macrocycle, respectively.     

A novel bacteriohopanoid from Celtis australis L.bark

A novel bacteriohopanoid elucidated as 3β-hydroxy-35-(cyclohexyl-5’-propan-7’-one)-33-ethyl-34-methyl-bactereohopane(1) has been isolated from the bark of Celtis australis(Ulmaceae) together with three known compounds apigenin,quercetin and its glucoside.The structure of 1 was characterized by means of chemical and spectral methods including advanced 2D NMR studies.     

Studies on the Zetapotential of Calcite/p-Sulfonato-calix[4,8]arenes

Zeta potential of calixarenes has been reported for the first time. The water-soluble calixarenes has been used as dispersion media in solid/liquid interface. p-sulfonato-calix[4]arene (PSC4) and p-sulfonato-calix[8]arene (PSC8) were synthesized and characterized by FTIR, NMR, mass spectrometry, and HPLC techniques. It was proved that the zeta potential is a fast and simple measurement to know the adsorption behavior of sufonato calixarnes on calcite. The chemisorption of p-sulfonato-calix[n]arene was confirmed by shift in iso electric point, adsorption studies and FTIR. The calculated free energy of adsorption value and its sign suggests the chemical interaction between the calcite surface and p-sulfonato calix[4]and[8]arene.     

In situ nucleophilic substitution reaction of N,N-dialkylaminoethyl-2-chlorides monitored by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

The detection and identification of degradation products of scheduled chemicals, which are characteristic markers of Chemical Warfare agents (CWAs), plays a key role in verification analysis. Identification of such non-scheduled but specific markers of CWAs helps in deciphering the kind of agent that was present in the sample submitted for off-site analysis. This paper describes the stability of N,N-dialkylaminoethyl-2-chlorides, which are precursors for highly toxic chemicals like VX, in different solvents. These compounds are stable in chloroform, acetonitrile, hexane and dichloromethane but tend to undergo in situ nucleophilic substitution reaction in the presence of alcohols giving the corresponding alkyl ether. The study shows that N,N-dialkylaminoethyl alkyl ethers can be used as markers of N,N-dialkylaminoethyl-2-chlorides. A detailed degradation study of these compounds in the presence of alcohols was carried out and it was found that the reaction follows pseudo-first order kinetics. Electron ionization mass spectral data for the methyl ethers of all the compounds are briefly discussed.     

Mass spectral studies of a series of N,N-dialkyl aminoethyl-2-chlorides and trimethyl silyl ethers of N,N-dialkyl aminoethane-2-ols under electron impact conditions

The electron impact (EI) mass spectra of a series of N,N-dialkyl-aminoethyl-2-chlorides, N(R(1))(R(2))-CH(2)-CH(2)Cl and trimethylsilyl ethers of N,N-dialkyl aminoethane-2-ols, N(R(1))(R(2))-CH(2)-CH(2)-O-Si(CH(3))(3), where R(1) and R(2) = methyl, ethyl, propyl and isopropyl, which are precursors of VX type of compounds, are studied. All the compounds (1-20) show abundant molecular ions, in addition to a weak [M - H](+) ion, except the N,N-diisopropyl group containing compounds (8 and 18). A general EI fragmentation pattern for the above two series of compounds is discussed. The observed fragment ions are due to simple homolytic cleavages, and they are distinct to allow the identification of the compounds unequivocally including those of isomeric compounds. The primary fragmentation of compounds 1-20 is beta-cleavage, i.e. homolytic cleavage of C-C bond, which is linked to the nitrogen atom. Three types of beta-cleavages are possible for these compounds, in which the abundance of beta-cleavage product ions is found to depend on the size and structure of the alkyl group attached to nitrogen. The alpha-cleavage fragment ions are found only for N,N-dialkyl aminoethyl-2-chlorides but are absent in the corresponding trimethylsilyl ethers of N,N-dialkyl aminoethane-2-ols. The retention indices are calculated for all the studied compounds (1-20) and are in the ranges of 750.38-1079.24 for 1-10 and 905.23-1190.25 for 11-20.     

A Nonlinear Generalization of Singular Value Decomposition and Its Applications to Mathematical Modeling and Chaotic Cryptanalysis

In this paper we are going to study the zero location and asymptotic behavior of extremal polynomials with respect to a generalized non-diagonal Sobolev norm in which the product of the function and its derivative appears. The orthogonal polynomials with respect to this Sobolev norm are a particular case of those extremal polynomials. The multiplication operator by the independent variable is the main tool in order to obtain our results.     

Is the protein surrounding the active site critical for hydrogen peroxide reduction by selenoprotein glutathione peroxidase? An ONIOM study

In this ONIOM(QM:MM) study, we evaluate the role of the protein surroundings in the mechanism of H2O2 reduction catalyzed by the glutathione peroxidase enzyme, using the whole monomer (3113 atoms in 196 amino acid residues) as a model. A new optimization scheme that allows the full optimization of transition states for large systems has been utilized. It was found that in the presence of the surrounding protein the optimized active site structure bears a closer resemblance to the one in the X-ray structure than that without the surrounding protein. H2O2 reduction occurs through a two-step mechanism. In the first step, the selenolate anion (E-Se(-)) formation occurs with a barrier of 16.4 kcal/mol and is endothermic by 12.0 kcal/mol. The Gln83 residue plays the key role of the proton abstractor, which is in line with the experimental suggestion. In the second step, the O-O bond is cleaved, and selenenic acid (R-Se-OH) and a water molecule are formed. The calculated barrier for this process is 6.0 kcal/mol, and it is exothermic by 80.9 kcal/mol. The overall barrier of 18.0 kcal/mol for H2O2 reduction is in reasonable agreement with the experimentally measured barrier of 14.9 kcal/mol. The protein surroundings has been calculated to exert a net effect of only 0.70 kcal/mol (in comparison to the "active site only" model including solvent effects) on the overall barrier, which is most likely due to the active site being located at the enzyme surface.     

SHRiNK: a method for enabling scaleable performance prediction and efficient network simulation

As the Internet grows, it is becoming increasingly difficult to collect performance measurements, to monitor its state, and to perform simulations efficiently. This is because the size and the heterogeneity of the Internet makes it time-consuming and difficult to devise traffic models and analytic tools which would allow us to work with summary statistics. We explore a method to side step these problems by combining sampling, modeling, and simulation. Our hypothesis is this: if we take a sample of the input traffic and feed it into a suitably scaled version of the system, we can extrapolate from the performance of the scaled system to that of the original. Our main findings are as follows. When we scale an IP network which is shared by short- and long-lived TCP-like and UDP flows and which is controlled by a variety of active queue management schemes, then performance measures such as queueing delay and drop probability are left virtually unchanged. We show this in theory and in simulations. This makes it possible to capture the performance of large networks quite faithfully using smaller scale replicas.