2/27/2007

Quick post on cool idea from people we like

What? Someone who isn't Excimer is posting? Every now and then I have to take a break from staring at equations or my eyes will cross. Spring break isn't far off, though, so if Excimer is lucky, I will pick up the slack then.[1]

Confession: Both of us behind CBC have a raging chemical celebrity crush on Bob Grubbs and Sir Fraser Stoddart.[2] With that in mind, I've been meaning to mention this, but it got buried on the flash drive...better late than never, right?


Ru, like Pd, is MAGIC.

In short, the gray three-armed piece is the template, and the ring-looking piece is a crown ether with two little arms terminated by alkenes. The crown ether threads itself onto the template, then ADMET occurs to assemble the trimer. In the absence of the template, there is no trimer, although a bit of dimer is formed.

Granted, this definitely isn't the beginning of such work. There are more papers out there than I want to link to, but here is something along the same lines from Org Lett in 2006.




[1] An upcoming exam has me confronting the irony inherent in being Ψ*Ψ. If it didn't sound so cool, growing p-chem antipathy would force me to change it.
[2] Especially since the latter was knighted. You have to admit that's pretty cool.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

How could you not have a crush on Grubbs?
Also, what's happened to the inorganic blog Sehr Kosmisch that you folks link to? I rather liked that one.

Anonymous said...

It's not metathesis, but this one is cute as well... known in the group as the 'Little Mac' and 'Big Mac'...

Anonymous said...

oops - the link is here

Ψ*Ψ said...

Naffer: I have no idea what Kosmisch is up to. I still read it...whenever he posts, that is.
Stuart: Were you in the Stoddart group? If so...I'd be interested in hearing more...

Anonymous said...

I was lucky enough to be in both the Stoddart and Grubbs groups - which is why I couldn't resist commenting on the post (check the author list in the Org. Lett. you link to). I'll drop you line on e-mail later...

Ψ*Ψ said...

OH! First author! How did I not notice that? All apologies--I must be especially oblivious this week.

Anonymous said...

A mere twist of fate - it's an alphabetical list... Al Nelson did the lion's share of the work (another who followed the Stoddart-Grubbs PhD/Postdoc combo path).

Anonymous said...

This is a nice template-directed synthesis though.
Hm ... maybe I can propose it to my supervisor to study it theoretically (model reaction dynamics).

And .. thanks for linking to my blog :)


Vitalii

Anonymous said...

HI Stuart

Thanks for sharing the links with us .....