Phosphate diester hydrolysis is strongly accelerated, by a factor of 104, in the presence of artificial enzymes especially designed in the light of spatiotemporal concepts, anchoring imidazoles in a pillar[5]­arene matrix. Host:guest complexes cleave the aryl phosphodiesters via nucleophilic attack of the properly placed imidazole moieties with the release of 2,4-dinitrophenolate and the formation of unstable phosphoroamidates that regenerate the catalyst and 2,4-dinitrophenyl phosphate. Comparison of the reactivity of P5IMD with that of imidazole shows a 270-fold increase. Asymmetrical diesters allow the formation of two different docking structures of the host:guest complex, with just one being reactive and allowing selectivity increases of 102-fold, compared with the reaction in bulk water of the same asymmetrical diesters.

UA is a potential anti-diabetic agent with pharmacological properties for insulin resistance and diabetes therapy.

Many essential oils (EOs) of different plant species possess interesting antimicrobial effects on buccal bacteria and antioxidant properties. Eugenia klotzschiana Berg (pêra-do-cerrado, in Portuguese) is a species of Myrtaceae with restricted distribution in the Cerrado. The essential oils were extracted through the hydrodistillation technique using a modified Clevenger apparatus (2 hours) and chemically characterized by GC-MS. The major compounds were α-copaene (10.6 %) found in oil from leaves in natura, β-bisabolene (17.4 %) in the essential oil from dry leaves and α-(E)-bergamotene (29.9 %) in oil from flowers. The antioxidant activity of essential oils showed similarities in both methods under analysis (DPPH and ABTS˙+) and the results suggested moderate to high antioxidant activity. The antibacterial activity was evaluated by determining minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs), using the microdilution method. MIC values below 400 µg/mL were obtained against Streptococcus salivarius (200 µg/mL), S. mutans (50 µg/mL), S. mitis (200 µg/mL) and Prevotella nigrescens (50 µg/mL). This is the first report of the chemical composition and antibacterial and antioxidant activities of the essential oils of E. klotzschiana. These results suggest that E. klotzschiana, a Brazilian plant, provide initial evidence of a new and alternative source of substances with medicinal interest.

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