Artemisinin semi-synthesis

Newman and co-workers at Amyris have reported their large scale semi synthesis of artemisinin.

Nature paper

Paxilline biosynthesis

Hideaki Oikawa and co-workers at Hokkaido University have reported in JACS on a biosynthesis study of paxilline.

JACS paper

Not just isolating small molecules anymore…

Hideaki Oikawa and co-workers from Hokkaido University have reported in Organic Letters on the isolation of an enzyme that was known to produce some natural products. They expressed and purified the enzyme, incubated the enzyme in the presence of substrates:  geranyl diphosphate (GPP) and isopentenyl diphosphate (IPP), and examined the products.

OL paper

Aplyronine A target

Hideo Kigoshi and co-workers from the University of Tsukuba have reported in JACS on a chemical biological approach to find the aplyronine A target.

JACS paper

 

Tetarimycin A

Sean Brady and co-workers from Rockefeller University have reported in JACS on the isolation of tetarimycin A, which had a MIC (minimum inhibitory concentration) of 1.5 micrograms/mL against S. aureus 6538P.

JACS paper

New fuels approach

Dean Toste and co-workers published in Nature on a way to use bacteria to break down sugars then extracting the broken down products and reacting them together with a palladium catalyst to form a fuel source.

 

Nature paper

Foamy beer gene

Tomas Villa and co-workers from the University of Santiago de Compostela have published in JAFC on the isolation of the foaming gene found in yeast to make foamy beer.

JAFC paper

Enantioselective ketone reduction with enzymes

Manfred Reetz and co-workers from Max-Planck have reported in JACS on a directed evolution study to determine a difference in enantioselectivity of a reduction of a ketone.

JACS paper

Tubulexin chemical biology

Herbert Waldmann and co-workers at Max Planck have reported in ACIE on the chemical biology of tubulexins.

ACIE paper

Type 2 diabetes therapeutic?

Here’s a study by Zhong-Yin Zhang and co-workers at Indiana University on a PTP-MEG2 inhibitor.

JACS paper