Over the last ten years there has been a huge increase in development and applications of organocatalysis in which the catalyst acts as a nucleophile. Amidines and guanidines are often only thought of as strong organic bases however, a number of small molecules containing basic functional groups have been shown to act as efficient nucleophilic catalysts. This tutorial review highlights the use of amidine, guanidine, and related isothiourea catalysts in organic synthesis, as well as the evidence for the nucleophilic nature of these catalysts. The most common application of these catalysts to date has been in acyl transfer reactions, although the application of these catalysts towards other reactions is an increasing area of interest. In this respect, amidine and guanidine derived catalysts have been shown to be effective in catalysing aldol reactions, Morita-Baylis-Hillman reactions, conjugate additions, carbonylations, methylations, silylations, and brominations.

[2,3]-Sigmatropic rearrangement processes of allylic ylides or their equivalents can be applied to a variety of different substrates and generate products of wide interest/applicability to organic synthesis. This review describes the development and applications of stereoselective [2,3]-rearrangement reactions in which a substoichiometric amount of a catalyst is used in either the formation of the reactive intermediate or the [2,3]-rearrangement step itself.

We report on a preliminary investigation of the connections between quasiperiodic tilings, algebraic number theory, and cut-and-project sets. We substantially answer the question "which 1-dimensional tilings obtained by inflation rules are quasiperiodic" by showing that in general the characteristic equation of the inflation rule should have one root of absolute value greater than one and the rest of absolute value less than one. We also show that the vertices of such a tiling are contained in a cut-and-project set

Type I DNA restriction/modification (RM) enzymes are molecular machines found in the majority of bacterial species. Their early discovery paved the way for the development of genetic engineering. They control (restrict) the influx of foreign DNA via horizontal gene transfer into the bacterium while maintaining sequence-specific methylation (modification) of host DNA. The endonuclease reaction of these enzymes on unmethylated DNA is preceded by bidirectional translocation of thousands of base pairs of DNA toward the enzyme. We present the structures of two type I RM enzymes, EcoKI and EcoR124I, derived using electron microscopy (EM), small-angle scattering (neutron and X-ray), and detailed molecular modeling. DNA binding triggers a large contraction of the open form of the enzyme to a compact form. The path followed by DNA through the complexes is revealed by using a DNA mimic anti-restriction protein. The structures reveal an evolutionary link between type I RM enzymes and type II RM enzymes.

A mechanistic study of the isothiourea-catalyzed enantioselective [2,3]-rearrangement of allylic ammonium ylides is described. Reaction kinetic analyses using 19F NMR and density functional theory computations have elucidated a reaction profile and allowed identification of the catalyst resting state and turnover-rate limiting step. A catalytically relevant catalyst–substrate adduct has been observed, and its constitution elucidated unambiguously by 13C and 15N isotopic labeling. Isotopic entrainment has shown the observed catalyst–substrate adduct to be a genuine intermediate on the productive cycle toward catalysis. The influence of HOBt as an additive upon the reaction, catalyst resting state, and turnover-rate limiting step has been examined. Crossover experiments have probed the reversibility of each of the proposed steps of the catalytic cycle. Computations were also used to elucidate the origins of stereocontrol, with a 1,5-S···O interaction and the catalyst stereodirecting group providing transition structure rigidification and enantioselectivity, while preference for cation−π interactions over C–H···π is responsible for diastereoselectivity.