The synthesis of two marine natural products containing a 3-alkylidene-6-arylidene-2,5-diketopiperazine scaffold by employing two consecutive aldol condensations starting with 1,4-diacetyl-2,5-diketopiperazine is reported. The target compounds contain a phenol or an imidazole group as aryl substituents, respectively, and suitable conditions for the aldol condensation of 1-acyl-3-alkylidene-2,5-dik ...

<i>Background</i>: Quorum sensing (QS) is a cell-to cell communication system that bacteria use to synchronize activities as a group. LitR, the master regulator of QS in <i>Aliivibrio salmonicida</i>, was recently shown to regulate activities such as motility, rugosity and biofilm formation in a temperature dependent manner. LitR was also found to be a positive regulator of <i>rpoQ</i>. RpoQ ...

Using a recently developed recursive scheme for the calculation of high-order geometric derivatives of frequency-dependent molecular properties [Ringholm et al., J. Comp. Chem., 2014, 35, 622], we present the first analytic calculations of anharmonic infrared (IR) and Raman spectra including anharmonicity both in the vibrational frequencies and in the IR and Raman intensities. In the case of anharmonic ...

The general theory required for the calculation of analytic third energy derivatives at the coupled-cluster level of theory is presented and connected to preceding special formulations for hyperpolarizabilities and polarizability gradients. Based on our theory, we have implemented a scheme for calculating the dipole Hessian matrix in a fully analytical manner within the coupled-cluster singles and ...

With its ability to show the interactions between drug-target proteins and small-molecule ligands, X-ray crystallography is an essential tool in drug-discovery programmes. However, its usefulness can be limited by crystallization artifacts or by the data resolution, and in particular when assumptions of unimodal binding (and isotropic motion) do not apply. Discrepancies between the modelled crystal ...

Medical devices with an effective anti-colonization surface are important tools for combatting healthcare-associated infections. Here, we investigated the anti-colonization efficacy of antimicrobial peptides covalently attached to a gold model surface. The gold surface was modified by a self-assembled polyethylene glycol monolayer with an acetylene terminus. The peptides were covalently connected ...

The use of water as a donor for hydrogen suitable for the reduction of several important classes of organic compounds is described. It is found that the reductive water splitting can be promoted by several metalloids among which silicon shows the best efficiency. The developed methodologies were applied for the reduction of nitro compounds, N‐oxides, sulfoxides, alkenes, alkynes, hydrodehalogenation ...

<p>Oil-based plastic production now exceeds 330 Mt annually1 and poses a major environmental problem. Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) is a group of bioplastic polyesters that can replace oil-based plastics in many applications, but economic costs are higher and industrial-scale production still limited. PHA is produced naturally by diverse groups of bacteria and stored intracellularly as hydrophobic ...