The Review by V. Snieckus et al. traces the historical origins of the palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions that Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi, and Akira Suzuki discovered. What progress has been made and how can the proliferation of discovery within the field of metal-catalyzed organic transformations be understood? In a Minireview, A. J. McConnell and P. D. Beer discuss current research on heteroditopic receptors for ion-pair recognition. The Highlights deal with diaminocarbene complexes of gold(I) in enantioselective catalysis (H. G. Raubenheimer), the structure of human α₂-macroglobulin (U. Hahn et al.), and tamed arene and heteroarene trifluoromethylation (D. Cahard et al.).

In the Communications section, L. Grill et al. describe the polymerization on stepped surfaces, the alignment of polymers, and the identification of catalytic sites (see picture). S. M. Cohen et al. present tetrahedral supramolecular clusters of Cu^I, Ag^I, and Au^I with a rigid threefold-symmetric phosphine ligand: the first series to form across an entire group of the periodic table. S.-L. You et al. succeeded in the asymmetric N-allylation of indoles through the iridium-catalyzed allylic alkylation/oxidation of indolines.

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• Angewandte issue: One Step Ahead,
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51(21).