Hard or soft – who cares? In a Review, H. Mayr et al. say farewell to the HSAB treatment of ambident reactivity and present a qualitative Marcus theory as an alternative. In a Minireview, T. Carell et al. describe the sixth base of the genome. The lasting contributions of A. M. Zaitsev in synthetic chemistry are summarized by D. E. Lewis in an Essay. The Highlight by E. Hevia and R. E. Mulvey deals with salt effects in organometallic syntheses. R. Schlögl points out the role of chemistry in regenerative energy in an Editorial.
In the Communications section, M. Elofsson et al. present an inhibitor with three sialic acid groups (see picture) that blocks the binding pockets of a Fischer-Knob protein and thus prevents the infection of human cornea epithel cells. R. D. Miller et al. show how to purify nanoparticles in nonaqeous media by electrophoresis. D. Nietlispach et al. demonstrate a compressed sensing method to reconstruct multidimensional NMR spectra quickly. J.-P. Cheng et al. succeeded in a change of regioselectivity of asymmetric 1,2- and 1,4-additions by changing the anions of an indium Lewis acid.
