A group from Pohang University of Science and Technology in Korea successfully formed a one-bead-one compound library of macrocyclic peptoids, DNA-encoded by adding nucleotides in ligation reactions (Lim et al; Bioconjugate Chem., 2019, 30, 2931).
Every winter there is a global influenza pandemic, infecting hundreds of millions of people and killing several hundreds of thousands – with an average of thousands of deaths in the UK alone. For winter 2020, however, there has been something extra – the coronavirus Covid-19 – and the world has literally ‘caught a cold’.
When seeking selectivity in a synthetic step, a common guiding principle is to restrict conformational mobility in ligands, catalysts and transition states to limit the number of competing reaction pathways, and so simplify the process of reaction optimisation.