The radical S-adenosylmethionine (S-AdoMet) superfamily contains thousands of proteins that catalyze highly diverse conversions, most of which are poorly understood due to a lack of information regarding chemical products and radical-dependent transformations. We here report that NosL, involved in forming the indole side ring of the thiopeptide nosiheptide (NOS), is a radical S-AdoMet 3-methyl-2-indolic acid (MIA) synthase. NosL catalyzed an unprecedented carbon chain reconstitution of L-Trp to give MIA, showing removal of the Cα-N unit and shift of the carboxylate to the indole ring. Dissection of the enzymatic process upon the identification of products and a putative glycyl intermediate uncovered a radical-mediated, unusual fragmentation-recombination reaction. This finding unveiled a key step in radical S-AdoMet enzyme-catalyzed structural rearrangements during complex biotransformations. Additionally, NosL tolerated fluorinated L-Trps as the substrates, allowing for production of a regiospecifically halogenated thiopeptide that has not been found in over 80 entity-containing, naturally occurring thiopeptide family.

The first rare earth metal terminal imido complex has been isolated and structurally characterized. The complex has an extremely short M-N bond length and a nearly linear M-N-C angle. DFT studies showed two p orbitals of N(imido) atom form two bonds with two d orbitals of rare earth metal ion.

The mechanisms of reductive functionalization of CO 2 to formamide catalyzed by N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) were comprehensively studied with DFT calculations. New activation mode with much lower energy barrier than those proposed before was discovered. In this reaction, NHC acts as neither a CO 2 nor a silane activator, but as a precursor of the real catalyst, i.e., the in situ formed ionic liquid [NHCH] + [Carbamate] -. In this loose contact ion pair, the negatively charged O atom of the carbamate anion becomes the new active site, and is free to do nucleophilic attack. When amine is absent, CO 2 will be converted into methanol. In this case, the NHC-CO 2 adduct is the real catalytic species, the active site shifted from the carbene C atom to the negatively charged O atom. These new activation modes follow a pattern of "S N 2@Si-Acceptor", in which the Si-H bond is activated via concerted backside S N 2 nucleophilic attack by the negatively charged O atom, and the leaving hydride is directly accepted by a free CO 2 molecule. The advantages of these new activation modes originate from the following points: (1) the ionic liquid [NHCH] + [Carbamate] -and NHC-CO 2 adduct are thermodynamically more stable than NHC; (2) the active site of the NHC catalyst is extended outside a lot. Consequently, the large steric effect between the NHC arms and the substrates in transition state can be avoided to some extent; (3) O atom has good silicon-affinity. In addition, a free CO 2 molecule, whose carbon atom is more electrophilic than those of the CO 2 moieties in NHC-CO 2 adduct and carbamate, acts as an efficient hydride acceptor.

2,4-Oxazole is an important structural motif in various natural products. An efficient modular synthesis of this structure is achieved via a [3+2] annulation between a terminal alkyne and a carboxamide by using a gold-catalyzed oxidation strategy. The postulated reactive intermediate, a terminal α-oxo gold carbene, previously known to be highly electrophilic and hence impropable to be trapped by stoichiometric external nucleophiles, is coerced to react smoothly with a carboxamide en route to the oxazole ring by a P,N- or P,S-bidentate ligand such as Mor-DalPhos; in stark contrast, often used ligands including monodentate phosphines and NHCs are totally ineffective. The role of these bidentate phosphines in this reaction is attributed to the formation of a tricoordinated gold carbene intermediate, which is less electrophilic and hence more chemoselective when reacting with nucleophiles. The success in using bidentate phosphine ligands to temper the reactivities of in-situ generated gold carbenes would likely open many new opportunities to apply the oxidative gold catalysis to the development of novel methods, and the implication of tricoordinated gold intermediates in homogeneous gold catalysis should stimulate further advance in gold catalysis.

The carbonylation of carbenes through catalytic cycles is highly desirable due to the importance of ketene-mediated reactions in organic synthesis. In this investigation, a highly efficient and mild catalytic approach toward ketene intermediates has been developed based on Pd-catalyzed carbonylation of diazo compounds with CO. When α-diazocarbonyl compounds or N-tosylhydrazone salts are heated in the presence of a palladium catalyst under atmospheric pressure of CO, ketene intermediates are formed in situ, where they undergo further reactions with various nucleophiles such as alcohols, amines, or imines. The Pd-catalyzed tandem carbonylation-Staudinger cycloaddition gives β-lactam derivatives in good yields with excellent trans diastereoselectivity. The results from DFT calculation on the reaction mechanism suggest that Pd is involved in the [2 + 2] cycloaddition process and affects the diastereoselectivity of the β-lactam products by assisting isomerization of the addition intermediate. On the other hand, the acylketenes generated from the Pd-catalyzed carbonylation of α-diazoketones react with imines in a formal [4 + 2] cycloaddition manner to afford 1,3-dioxin-4-one derivatives. This straightforward carbonylation provides a new approach toward highly efficient catalytic generation of ketene species under mild conditions.

The first enantioselective construction of a new class of axially chiral naphthyl-indole skeletons has been established by organocatalytic asymmetric coupling reactions of 2-naphthols with 2-indolylmethanols (up to 99 % yield, 97:3 e.r.). This approach not only affords a new type of axially chiral heterobiaryl backbone, but also provides a new catalytic enantioselective strategy for constructing axially chiral biaryl scaffolds by making use of the C3-electrophilicity of 2-indolylmethanols.

A carbapenem-nonsusceptible Enterobacter aerogenes strain named 3-SP was isolated from a human case of pneumonia in a Chinese teaching hospital. NDM-1 carbapenemase is produced by a pNDM-BJ01-like conjugative plasmid designated p3SP-NDM to account for carbapenem resistance of 3-SP. p3SP-NDM was fully sequenced and compared with all publically available pNDM-BJ01-like plasmids. The genetic differences between p3SP-NDM and pNDM-BJ01 include only 18 single nucleotide polymorphisms, a 1 bp deletion and a 706 bp deletion. p3SP-NDM and pNDM-BJ01 harbor an identical Tn125 element organized as ISAba125, blaNDM−1, bleMBL, ΔtrpF, dsbC, cutA, ΔgroES, groEL, ISCR27, and ISAba125. The blaNDM−1 surrounding regions in these pNDM-BJ01-like plasmids have a conserved linear organization ISAba14-aphA6-Tn125-unknown IS, with considerable genetic differences identified within or immediately downstream of Tn125. All reported pNDM-BJ01-like plasmids are exclusively found in Acinetobacter, whereas this is the first report of identification of a pNDM-BJ01-like plasmid in Enterobacteriaceae.

Most homogenous gold catalyses demand ≥0.5 mol % catalyst loading. Due to the high cost of gold, these reactions are unlikely to be applicable in medium or large scale applications. Here we disclose a novel ligand design based on the privileged biphenyl-2-phosphine framework that offers a potentially general approach to dramatically lowering catalyst loading. In this design, an amide group at the 3’ position of the ligand framework directs and promotes nucleophilic attack at the ligand gold complex-activated alkyne, which is unprecedented in homogeneous gold catalysis considering the spatial challenge of using ligand to reach antiapproaching nucleophile in a linear P-Au-alkyne centroid structure. With such a ligand, the gold(I) complex becomes highly efficient in catalyzing acid addition to alkynes, with a turnover number up to 99,000. Density functional theory calculations support the role of the amide moiety in directing the attack of carboxylic acid via hydrogen bonding.