S. J. Danishefsky et al. describe their fascinating journey into the history of isonitriles en route to complex amides in a Review. Which coupling methods for the formation of peptidyl and glycopeptidyl amide bonds are broadly useful? P. Rivera-Fuentes and F. Diederich discuss the role of allenes in molecular materials in a Minireview. The Highlights deal with fullerenes that encapsulate metals (S. Nagase et al.) and the total synthesis and structural revision of the piperarborenines (F. Frébault and N. Maulide).
In the Communications section, S. K. Lee et al. demonstrate that the development of hippocampus neurons is accelerated on well-packed structures of silica nanobeads. S. Sieber et al. used a proteomic profiling approach to show that aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 may be a target of duocarmycin, whose analogues show antitumor activity. J. Wang et al. succeeded in the transition-metal-free synthesis of pinacol alkylboronates. J. P. Renault et al. report how radical migration between aliphatic amino acid side chains can occur in solution and intramolecularly in peptides (see picture).
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