The O’Connor and Tosin groups have published work on the use of high mass accuracy tandem mass spectrometry for characterising the structures of polyketides, including erythromycin A, lasalocid A and iso-lasalocid A. They report in Analytical Chemistry on the use of Collision Activated Dissociation (CAD) and Electron Induced Dissociation (EID) as tools for determining structural information on these types of molecules. EID was shown to cause greater fragmentation of the compounds, complementary to that obtained using CAD, leading to more detailed structural information being obtained. These techniques were also combined in multistage mass spectrometry experiments, in order to use the fragmentation patterns to distinguish between lasalocid A and its isomer, iso-lasalcoid A. This work illustrates the potential of these tools and will be applied to identifying unknown polyketides and their biosynthetic intermediates.

The full article can be found at: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ac3022778

Sadler and Stavros groups in collaboration with Prof Martin Paterson at Heriot-Watt University, publish work in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. The work describes the first demonstration of a 2-photon activated, square planar platinum (II) complex. The enhanced photolabilization demonstrated may be useful in the design of novel photoactivatable platinum chemotherapeutic agents in situations where deep tissue penetration is needed. Read the article here.

Costantini and co-workers publish in Physical Review B the results of a combined experimental-theoretical work that sheds light on the atomic scale-structure of MnSi thin films grown on Si(111).

Ada Della Pia and Giovanni Costantini publish the Scanning Tunneling Microscopy entry for the Springer Encyclopedia of Nanotechnology, Bharat Bhushan (ed).

Congratulations to PhD student Becky Wills, selected over more than 100 nominations as a winner of the PG Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence

The O’Connor group has developed a computation which simultaneously doubles the resolution, sensitivity and mass accuracy of Fourier Transform Mass Spectrometry at no extra cost.

Costantini and collaborators report in JACS on dispersions of HBC, an analogue to small graphene flakes.

The Gibson Group in collaboration with Pathologists from the Johannes Guttenburg University (Mainz) have published two studies onto the role of nanoparticle size and coating on their interactions with cells. The aim is to address questions regarding nanoparticle toxicity (if any). Focus was placed on cells from the vasculature (circulation). These cells are often negleted but any injected drug delivery system will encounter several kilometers of these. Several particle formations were found to enter endothelial cells associated with the blood-brain barrier - perhaps the most challenging biological barrier to drug delivery.

This work is published in Biomacromolecules: Read here and Particle Fibre Toxicology: Read here

(Particle Fibre Tox is No 1 Tox. Journal in ISI Citation reports, publishing Primary Research)

Establishing an independent academic career is an exciting and challenging process. The data available for UK chemistry suggests that more women than men find the process not exciting enough or too challenging. A key aspect of success in any career path is finding role models, establishing networks, and being tapped into good sources of information. Our aim is therefore to create opportunities for all of these in the first (and subsequent) Irène Joliot-Curie conference.

Prof. Greg Challis and Dr Lijiang Song, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Paris, report in Angewandte Chemie a hitherto unanticipated pathway for the biosynthesis of pyrroles from sugars. Using a combination of genetic engineering, isolation, structure elucidation, synthesis and feeding of biosynthetic intermediates, and incorporation of stable isotope-labelled precursors, the researchers showed that a carbohydrate, most likely N-acetylglucosamine-1-phosphate, is elaborated to the 4-acetamidopyrrole-2-carboxylate building blocks of the DNA-binding antibiotic congocidine (also known as netropsin). The assembly of pyrroles from carbohydrates is unprecedented in Nature and raises several intriguing questions regarding the mechanisms of the reactions involved. See http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201201445/abstract for further details.

Nanodiamonds have been found to help loosen crystallized fat from surfaces in a project led by Dr Andrew Marsh at University of Warwick. The tiny carbon particles transform the ability of surfactants to shift dirt in cold water, findings that could bring eco friendly low temperature laundry cycles.

The research is published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces and highlighted in the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, 26 June.

Nanodiamond Promotes Surfactant-Mediated Triglyceride Removal from a Hydrophobic Surface at or below Room Temperature Xianjin Cui, Xianping Liu, Andrew S. Tatton, Steven P. Brown, Haitao Ye, and Andrew Marsh ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/am300560z

The Challis group and collaborators at the John Innes Centre report in the journal Chemical Science on the genomics-driven discovery of a novel polyketide alkaloid with an unprecedented structure. Incorporation experiments with stable isotope-labelled precursors combined with bioinformatics analyses were used to deduce the likely biosynthetic pathway for the natural product. See http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/sc/c2sc20410j for further details.