The GibsonGroup report in Angewandte Chemie a new macromolecular ‘antifreeze’ which improves the cryopreservation of cells

A collaboration between the Fox, Scott and Gibson groups has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The team were inspired by how small helical antifreeze proteins in Nature enable extreomophiles to survive low temperatures, where other species would not survive. Rather than using traditional peptide/protein chemistry, the team used self-assembled metallohelicates which have similar dimensions to a small alpha helix, and found some which were remarkably potent at stopping ice crystal growth ; a major technological challenge in applications from wind farms, to aircraft to cryopreservation. Modelling studies showed that the underlying activity could be linked the patches of hydrophobicity (water liking) and hydrophobicity (water hating).

Read the paper here

Antifreeze Protein Mimetic Metallohelices with Potent Ice Recrystallization Inhibition Activity

Several studentship opportunities for PhD study are available in the Chemistry Department of Warwick University.

Ross Jaggers and Stefan Bon from BonLab report in Materials Horizons the fabrication of hydrogel objects which can be individually programmed to uniquely respond to a shared external trigger, and have the ability to communicate with one another when in proximety.

Ross Jaggers and Stefan Bon from BonLab report in Materials Horizons the fabrication of hydrogel objects which can be individually programmed to uniquely respond to a shared external trigger, and have the ability to communicate with one another when in proximety.

Ross Jaggers and Stefan Bon from BonLab report in Materials Horizons the fabrication of hydrogel objects which can be individually programmed to uniquely respond to a shared external trigger, and have the ability to communicate with one another when in proximety.

David Fox who spearheaded the project along with Anish Mistry in collaboration with IBM have synthesised and imaged a highly reactive molecule for the first time, Triangulene. It was first hypothesised in the 1950’s and ever since, chemists have struggled to synthesise it until now.

Triangulene, a triangular fragment of graphene which contains two radicals is predicted to have desirable properties for electronic devices. For more information see the article attached.

http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2016.305.html

The Pattison Group have published the first Rh-catalysed arylation of fluorinated ketones in Chem Comm. Interestingly, we showed the difluorinated (CF₂H) ketone to be more reactive than the trifluoromethyl (CF₃) ketone, despite the fact each additional fluorine atom provides extra electronic activation.

Warwick Chemists Dr. Luke Rochford and Mr. Phil Blowey are featured on the back cover of Chemical Science Link for their work on quantitive measurement of the surface 'trans' effect Link