Stereochemistry is a very important issue for pharmaceutical industry and can determine drug efficacy. Scott group metallohelices have been shown, in collaboration with Xiaogang Chu and co-workers at Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, China, to enantioselectively target and inhibit amyloid (Aβ) aggregation. This provides new insights into chiral inhibition of Aβ aggregation and opens a new avenue for design and screening of chiral agents as Aβ inhibitors against Alzheimer's disease. The work is published in J. Am. Chem. Soc.

Applications are invited for fully-funded studentships at the new Molecular Analytical Sciences (MAS) Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT)

MAS offers a four year degree programme (MSc + PhD) in Multidisciplinary Science which aims to develop new techniques and methodologies and apply them in creative ways to solve real-world problems. The disciplines covered include chemistry, physics, statistics, mathematics, biology, engineering and computer science. Candidates with a first degree in any of these subjects are invited to apply.

Caroline Biggs in the GibsonGroup won the prize for best poster presentation at the 13th European Summer Course on Glycosciences. Her winning poster was entitled 'Polymer Functionalised Surfaces for Microarray Applications'.

The GibsonGroup describe glycopolymers that selectively target the Cholera toxin and may provide a non-antibiotic tool to combat infectious diseases

Lewandowski group in collaboration with Ladizhansky and Brown (U. of Guelph) groups have characterised site-specific molecular motions of a 7-helix membrane protein within a lipid bilayer using solid-state NMR measurements. Read the article in JACS. 

Warwick Chemistry has played a lead role in securing funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for 2 new Centres for Doctoral training, in Molecular Analytical Science and Diamond Science and Technology, as part of the recently announced UK's largest investment in postgraduate training in engineering and physical sciences. The Universities and Science Minister, David Willetts, announced the funding of over seventy new Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs), spread across 24 UK universities on 22nd November.

For further information please visit:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/university_of_warwick_takes_share_of_163350m_to_train_tomorrow146s_engineers_and_scientists1

http://onlinepressoffice.tnrcommunications.co.uk/universities-funding/video 

In collaboration with the groups of Neil Wilson and Gavin Bell in Physics at Warwick and groups at the synchrotrons of ELETTRA in Trieste and SOLEIL in Paris, the Costantini group has published a Rapid Research Letter in the journal Physica Status Solidi on the natural doping of graphene grown on copper foil by chemical vapour deposition (CVD).

Using nano-spot angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) it has been shown that graphene grown on copper foil is undoped with an ideal gapless band structure, even after air exposure. Up to 200 °C annealing, the band structure is that of pristine undoped graphene but, upon annealing to 500 °C, the formation of a band gap is observed together with evidence of doping.

The work contributes to recent discussion on the electronic properties of technologically relevant graphene grown on low-cost copper foil. In the long-term, commercialisation of graphene will require economical techniques for its fabrication on a large scale. Therefore, its growth under low-pressure conditions on low-cost polycrystalline Cu foils represents a strong step towards a number of graphene applications.

Further details can be read at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pssr.201307224/abstract

An inter-university collaboration between the Costantini, Jones, Bonifazi (Namur) and de Vita (King’s College) groups showed the role of deprotonation on the two dimensional assembly of novel borazine compounds on a copper substrate. The results are published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Collaboration between the Costantini and Wills groups investigates the dissociation of a newly synthesised, novel chiral ester on metallic substrates. The products of dissociation are directly imaged by scanning tunnelling microscopy allowing for the delineation of the cleavage mechanism as seen in ChemComm.

The Gibson group have undertaken a detailed study into the ability of synthetic polymers to inhibit the growth of ice crystals - this is a fundmental process of incredible importance in biology (survival of extremophiles), medicine (cryoprotectection of cells/organs) and industry (preventing ice-induced damage). The Gibson group are pioneering the use of polymers as alternative to antifreeze proteins - Nature's cryoprotectants, using a combination of chemical, analytical, biological and computational methods

Read their latest paper here, in collaboration with R. Notman (CSC): http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bm400217j

Ada Della Pia and Giovanni Costantini publish the Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy chapter for the Springer Surface Science Techniques book, Gianangelo Bracco and Bodil Holst (ed).