Heterogeneous Pd catalysts as emulsifiers in Pickering emulsions for integrated multistep synthesis in flow chemistry

• Katharina Hiebler,
• Georg J. Lichtenegger,
• Manuel C. Maier,
• Eun Sung Park,
• Renie Gonzales-Groom,
• Bernard P. Binks and
• Heidrun Gruber-Woelfler

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2018, 14, 648–658, doi:10.3762/bjoc.14.52

• . Keywords: compartmentalisation; heterogeneous catalysis; multistep flow chemistry; palladium; Pickering emulsions; Introduction Palladium (Pd) catalysis has been established as a key component in the toolbox of organic chemists. Reactions that are catalysed by palladium benefit from the remarkable

A recursive microfluidic platform to explore the emergence of chemical evolution

• David Doran,
• Marc Rodriguez-Garcia,
• Rebecca Turk-MacLeod,
• Geoffrey J. T. Cooper and
• Leroy Cronin

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2017, 13, 1702–1709, doi:10.3762/bjoc.13.164

• [10]. However, irrespective of their chemistry, it is likely that any artificial or alternative life-forms would need at least the following attributes: i) Compartmentalisation: a means of discretising individual living units and enabling controlled selective exchange between these units and their

• production of species of comparable complexity to those found exclusively in biology, as depicted in Figure 1. Droplet compartmentalisation In our previous work, we described the assembly of a custom-made 3D printed robotic platform that uses artificial evolution to select for desired behaviours in chemical

• , a few recent examples in the literature report the utilisation of pico- and nanolitre microfluidic water-in-oil droplets and liposomes as artificial cell analogues [14][15]. Aqueous, single emulsion microdroplets can be produced at kilohertz frequencies, and provide compartmentalisation on a similar

From chemical metabolism to life: the origin of the genetic coding process

• Antoine Danchin

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2017, 13, 1119–1135, doi:10.3762/bjoc.13.111

• -identified operations: compartmentalisation, metabolism, manipulation and memorisation. The former two operations are performed mainly by small molecules (carbon-based and comprising a few tens of atoms), whereas the latter two are carried out by macromolecules (nucleic acids and proteins, made of a limited

• number of building blocks). To these operations we must add two essential laws, complementarity and its major consequence, coding (just brought up as key to life). Making cells Compartmentalisation The atom of life is the cell, and a cell generate cells: “omnis cellula e cellula” [10]. The obvious

• that they split, fuse, get internalised and make complex internal networks [15]. Beside lipids, polypeptides form coacervates, which also allow for compartmentalisation [16]. A main difficulty to understand the process is that membrane proteins must fold within two-dimensional (2D) bilayers. This

Biocatalysis for the application of CO₂ as a chemical feedstock

• Apostolos Alissandratos and
• Christopher J. Easton

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2015, 11, 2370–2387, doi:10.3762/bjoc.11.259

• ]. In photoautotrophic bacteria (cyanobacteria) micro-compartmentalisation of the CO2-fixing reactions increases reaction rates [35][36]. The bacterial micro-compartments, called carboxysomes, are highly elaborate proteinic structures that usually also incorporate carbonic anhydrase [36][37

• [39]. Carboxysomal proteins have also been expressed in E. coli yielding a highly organised structure [41]. Use of carboxysomes for micro-compartmentalisation of CO2 biotransformation may therefore become a viable strategy in a range of synthetic biology applications, because not only CO2-transforming