No abstract

Mungbean (Vigna radiata) is a fast-growing, warm-season legume crop that is primarily cultivated in developing countries of Asia. Here we construct a draft genome sequence of mungbean to facilitate genome research into the subgenus Ceratotropis, which includes several important dietary legumes in Asia, and to enable a better understanding of the evolution of leguminous species. Based on the de novo assembly of additional wild mungbean species, the divergence of what was eventually domesticated and the sampled wild mungbean species appears to have predated domestication. Moreover, the de novo assembly of a tetraploid Vigna species (V. reflexo-pilosa var. glabra) provides genomic evidence of a recent allopolyploid event. The species tree is constructed using de novo RNA-seq assemblies of 22 accessions of 18 Vigna species and protein sets of Glycine max. The present assembly of V. radiata var. radiata will facilitate genome research and accelerate molecular breeding of the subgenus Ceratotropis.

Proton-conducting materials are an important component of fuel cells. Development of new types of proton-conducting materials is one of the most important issues in fuel-cell technology. Herein, we present newly developed proton-conducting materials, modularly built porous solids, including coordination polymers (CPs) or metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). The designable and tunable nature of the porous materials allows for fast development in this research field. Design and synthesis of the new types of proton-conducting materials and their unique proton-conduction properties are discussed.

The postsynthetic modification strategy is adopted to demonstrate for the first time the syntheses of catalytically active chiral MOPMs from a preassambled achiral framework, MIL-101, by attaching L-proline-derived chiral catalytic units to the open metal coordination sites of the host framework. Various characterization techniques (including PXRD, TGA, IR, and N(2) absorption measurements) indicated that the chiral units are successfully incorporated into MIL-101, keeping the parent framework intact. The new chiral MOPMs show remarkable catalytic activities in asymmetric aldol reactions (yield up to 90% and ee up to 80%). It is interesting to note that these heterogeneous catalysts show much higher enantioselectivity than the corresponding chiral catalytic units as homogeneous catalysts. This study demonstrates a simple and efficient route for the generation of catalytically active chiral MOPMs. A variety of chiral catalytic units can be, in principle, incorporated into chemically robust achiral MOPMs with large pores by postmodification and the resulting chiral MOPMs may find useful applications in catalytic asymmetric transformations.

The organic molecular porous material 1 obtained by recrystallization of cucurbit[6]uril (CB[6]) from HCl shows a high CO(2) sorption capacity at 298 K, 1 bar. Most interestingly, 1 showed the highest selectivity of CO(2) over CO among the known porous materials so far. The remarkable selectivity of CO(2) may be attributed to the exceptionally high enthalpy of adsorption (33.0 kJ/mol). X-ray crystal structure analysis of CO(2) adsorbed 1 revealed three independent CO(2) sorption sites: two in the 1D channels (A and B) and one in the molecular cavities (C). The CO(2) molecules adsorbed at sorption site A near the wall of the 1D channels interact with 1 through hydrogen bonding and at the same time interact with those at site B mainly through quadrupole-quadrupole interaction in a T-shaped arrangement. Interestingly, two CO(2) molecules are included in the CB[6] cavity (site C), interacting not only with the carbonyl groups of CB[6] but also with each other in a slipped-parallel geometry. The exceptionally selective CO(2) sorption properties of 1 may find useful applications in the pressure swing adsorption (PSA) process for CO(2) separation not only in the steel industry but also in other industries such as natural gas mining.

Cucurbituril‐based organic molecular porous materials with 1D channels filled with water–acid arrays were synthesized. The isostructural materials showed different proton conductivity depending on the nature and number of acid molecules present in the channels. The highly anisotropic conduction behavior of the materials was studied by single‐crystal conductivity measurements.

Graphical abstract

Carbonization of zinc containing metal-organic frameworks produces porous carbon materials with an interesting linear relationship between the Zn/C ratio of the precursors and the surface area of the resulting carbon materials.