Preface The field of nickel catalysis has made tremendous advances in the past decade. There are several key properties of nickel that have allowed for a broad range of innovative reaction development, such as facile oxidative addition and ready access to multiple oxidation states. In recent years, these properties have been increasingly understood and leveraged to perform transformations long considered exceptionally challenging. Herein, we discuss some of the most recent and significant developments in homogeneous nickel catalysis with an emphasis on both synthetic outcome and mechanism.

Nickel/photoredox catalysis is used to synthesize indolines in one step from iodoacetanilides and alkenes. Very high regioselectivity for 3-substituted indoline products is obtained for both aliphatic and styrenyl olefins. Mechanistic investigations indicate that oxidation to Ni(III) is necessary to perform the difficult C–N bond-forming reductive elimination, producing a Ni(I) complex which in turn is reduced to Ni(0). This process serves to further demonstrate the utility of photoredox catalysts as controlled single electron transfer agents in multi-oxidation state nickel catalysis.

Natural products are a continual source of inspiration for chemists, particularly for organic chemists engaged in reaction development and methodology. In the early stages of our research program, we were drawn to macrocyclic natural products containing allylic alcohol moieties, such as (−)-terpestacin (1, Figure 1). We envisioned, in an ideal case, an intramolecular reductive coupling (a field still in its infancy at the time) could be developed to join an alkyne and an aldehyde to yield this allylic alcohol, simultaneously closing the macrocycle. For this reason we began studying reductive coupling as a tool for C–C bond formation. Additionally, as our program developed, it became clear that a number of other natural products, such as amphidinolide T1 (2), which, although they do not contain allylic alcohols, could be produced in an analogous fashion after modification of the allylic alcohol formed from such a macrocyclization.

Achieving high selectivity in the Heck reaction of electronically unbiased alkenes has been a longstanding challenge. Using a nickel-catalyzed cationic Heck reaction, we were able to achieve excellent selectivity for branched products (≥19:1 in all cases) over a wide range of aryl electrophiles and aliphatic olefins. A bidentate ligand with a suitable bite angle and steric profile was key to obtaining high branched/linear selectivity, while the appropriate base suppressed alkene isomerization of the product. Though aryl triflates are traditionally used to access the cationic Heck pathway, we have shown that by using triethylsilyl trifluoromethanesulfonate (TESOTf), we can effect a counterion exchange of the catalytic nickel complex such that cheaper and more stable aryl chlorides, mesylates, tosylates, and sulfamates can be used to yield the same branched products with high selectivity.

Chemical methods have enabled the total synthesis of protein molecules of ever-increasing size and complexity. However, methods to engineer synthetic proteins comprising noncanonical amino acids have not kept pace, even though this capability would be a distinct advantage of the total synthesis approach to protein science. In this work, we report a platform for protein engineering based on the screening of synthetic one-bead one-compound protein libraries. Screening throughput approaching that of cell surface display was achieved by a combination of magnetic bead enrichment, flow cytometry analysis of on-bead screens, and high-throughput MS/MS-based sequencing of identified active compounds. Direct screening of a synthetic protein library by these methods resulted in the de novo discovery of mirror-image miniprotein-based binders to a ∼150-kDa protein target, a task that would be difficult or impossible by other means.