Nature Chemistry, Published online: 14 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41557-025-01770-7 Understanding the distance dependence and mechanistic behaviour of light-driven charge separation is crucial to advance artificial photosynthesis and solar energy conversion. It has now been shown that donor–bridge–acceptor null-coupled perylene bisimide arrays are good candidates for generating long-lived excitons and display ‘through-stack’ photoinduced electron transfer through pronounced π-orbital overlap ..read more

Nature Chemistry, Published online: 13 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41557-025-01751-w Degradation of carbon-backbone polymers, which make up most plastics, remains a formidable challenge owing to their strong and inert main-chain C–C bonds. Now it has been shown that aromatization-driven C–C bond cleavage is a viable strategy to endow full degradability into carbon backbones under mild conditions ..read more

Nature Chemistry, Published online: 12 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41557-025-01799-8 Publisher Correction: Amphoteric chalcogen-bonding and halogen-bonding rotaxanes for anion or cation recognition ..read more

Nature Chemistry, Published online: 12 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41557-025-01760-9 Native proteins use hydration frustration—regulating the dehydration of hydrophilic residues and the hydration of hydrophobic residues—to enhance their activity. Now it has been shown that single-polymer-chain nanoparticles made from random heteropolymers can exhibit similar hydration frustration, following design rules orthogonal to those of proteins ..read more

Nature Chemistry, Published online: 12 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41557-025-01762-7 The mechanisms that regulate the electrochemical equilibrium of condensates are not well understood. Now it has been shown that the aging process of biomolecular condensates can dynamically modulate the electrochemical equilibrium between phases, thereby affecting the physicochemical functions of condensates. This process potentially provides an active mechanism modulating intracellular ion flux ..read more

Nature Chemistry, Published online: 11 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41557-025-01769-0 N-monofluoromethyl amides (N-CH2F) have been challenging to prepare. Now, a general method for the synthesis of N-CH2F amides is developed. The strategy can be applied for the N-CH2F modification of peptides and drug derivatives. Moreover, the N-CH2F amides are relatively stable in various media, which could be beneficial for drug development ..read more

Nature Chemistry, Published online: 11 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41557-024-01729-0 Transfer hydrogenation is challenging to apply to aryl halide reductive cross-couplings because of competing hydrogenolysis. Now aryl halide cross-couplings mediated by sodium formate have been developed. These processes display orthogonality to Suzuki and Buchwald–Hartwig couplings as pinacol boronates and anilines are tolerated and, owing to chelated intermediates, effective for challenging 2-pyridyl systems ..read more

Nature Chemistry, Published online: 07 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41557-025-01775-2 Enzyme-catalysed 1,2-amino migration represents a viable biochemical process that is currently underutilized within the synthetic organic chemistry community. Building upon this biocatalytic mechanism, a biomimetic photoredox-catalysed 1,2-amino migration method has been developed. By integrating photoredox-catalysed conditions, this approach enables the modular synthesis of a diverse library of γ-substituted β-amino acids ..read more

Nature Chemistry, Published online: 07 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41557-025-01738-7 Antibiotic resistance can be addressed by reinventing classes of antibiotics through chemical synthesis. Here BT-33—a fully synthetic antibiotic—affords broad-spectrum activity against the bacterial ribosome. X-ray crystallography, theoretical calculations and structure–activity relationship studies reveal the structural features that contribute to the enhanced antibacterial activity and metabolic stability of BT-33 ..read more

Nature Chemistry, Published online: 07 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41557-025-01774-3 Bifunctional methyltransferase–cyclases both transfer a methyl group to alkenes and induce cyclization—a process called methylcyclization. Now a non-enzymatic silver(I)-mediated electrophilic methylcyclization has been reported. The reaction uses commercial reagents, is applicable to a wide range of substrates and affords structures that are difficult to access by conventional synthetic methods ..read more