Journal: Chemical Reviews

Abbreviation

Chem. Rev.

Publisher

American Chemical Society

Journal Volumes

ISSN

0009-2665
1520-6890

Description

Filters

Reset filters

Search Results

Publications 1 - 10 of 62
  • Sustainability in Wood Products: A New Perspective for Handling Natural Diversity
    Item type: Review Article
    Schubert, Mark; Panzarasa, Guido; Burgert, Ingo (2023)
    Chemical Reviews
    Wood is a renewable resource with excellent qualities and the potential to become a key element of a future bioeconomy. The increasing environmental awareness and drive to achieve sustainability is leading to a resurgence of research on wood materials. Nevertheless, the global climate changes and associated consequences will soon challenge the wood-value chains in several regions (e.g., central Europe). To cope with these challenges, it is necessary to rethink the current practice of wood sourcing and transformation. The goal of this review is to address the intrinsic natural diversity of wood, from its origin to its technological consequences for the present and future manufacturing of wood products. So far, industrial processes have been optimized to repress the variability of wood properties, enabling more efficient processing and production of reliable products. However, the need to preserve biodiversity and the impact of climate change on forests call for new wood processing techniques and green chemistry protocols for wood modification as enabling factors necessary for managing a more diverse wood provision in the future. This article discusses the past developments that have resulted in the current wood value chains and provides a perspective about how natural variability could be turned into an asset for making truly sustainable wood products. After briefly introducing the chemical and structural complexity of wood, the methods conventionally adopted for industrial homogenization and modification of wood are discussed in relation to their evolution toward increased sustainability. Finally, a perspective is given on technological potentials of machine learning techniques and of novel functional wood materials. Here the main message is that through a combination of sustainable forestry, adherence to green chemistry principles and adapted processes based on machine learning, the wood industry could not only overcome current challenges but also thrive in the near future despite the awaiting challenges.
  • Genetic Code Expansion Approaches to Decipher the Ubiquitin Code
    Item type: Review Article
    Wanka, Vera; Fottner, Maximilian; Cigler, Marko; et al. (2024)
    Chemical Reviews
    The covalent attachment of Ub (ubiquitin) to target proteins (ubiquitylation) represents one of the most versatile PTMs (post-translational modifications) in eukaryotic cells. Substrate modifications range from a single Ub moiety being attached to a target protein to complex Ub chains that can also contain Ubls (Ub-like proteins). Ubiquitylation plays pivotal roles in most aspects of eukaryotic biology, and cells dedicate an orchestrated arsenal of enzymes to install, translate, and reverse these modifications. The entirety of this complex system is coined the Ub code. Deciphering the Ub code is challenging due to the difficulty in reconstituting enzymatic machineries and generating defined Ub/Ubl-protein conjugates. This Review provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in using GCE (genetic code expansion) techniques to study the Ub code. We highlight strategies to site-specifically ubiquitylate target proteins and discuss their advantages and disadvantages, as well as their various applications. Additionally, we review the potential of small chemical PTMs targeting Ub/Ubls and present GCE-based approaches to study this additional layer of complexity. Furthermore, we explore methods that rely on GCE to develop tools to probe interactors of the Ub system and offer insights into how future GCE-based tools could help unravel the complexity of the Ub code.
  • Introduction: Vibrational Nanoscopy
    Item type: Journal Article
    Zenobi, Renato (2017)
    Chemical Reviews
  • Oxidation of alcohols with molecular oxygen on solid catalysts
    Item type: Review Article
    Mallat, Tamas; Baiker, Alfons (2004)
    Chemical Reviews
  • Metal-Catalyzed Carbon–Carbon Bond Cleavage of Unstrained Alcohols
    Item type: Journal Article
    Lutz, Marius; Morandi, Bill (2021)
    Chemical Reviews
    The functionalization of molecules by cleaving inert carbon-carbon single bonds is regarded as a great synthetic challenge due to their inherent stability. In recent years, significant progress has been made in the activation of small rings relying on the release of strain energy. By contrast, the number of catalytic methodologies for the activation of unstrained carbon-carbon single bonds is still limited. This review focuses on the recent developments in transition-metal-catalyzed cleavage of C-C bonds in unstrained alcohols via β-carbon elimination. Emphasis is placed on the mechanistic aspects of the discussed transformations and their applications to the deconstruction and reorganization of molecules. © 2020 American Chemical Society.
  • Ionic Liquids and Dense Carbon Dioxide
    Item type: Review Article
    Jutz, Fabian; Andanson, Jean-Michel; Baiker, Alfons (2011)
    Chemical Reviews
  • Nonspecific Binding - Fundamental Concepts and Consequences for Biosensing Applications
    Item type: Review Article
    Frutiger, Andreas; Tanno, Alexander; Hwu, Stephanie; et al. (2021)
    Chemical Reviews
    Nature achieves differentiation of specific and nonspecific binding in molecular interactions through precise control of biomolecules in space and time. Artificial systems such as biosensors that rely on distinguishing specific molecular binding events in a sea of nonspecific interactions have struggled to overcome this issue. Despite the numerous technological advancements in biosensor technologies, nonspecific binding has remained a critical bottleneck due to the lack of a fundamental understanding of the phenomenon. To date, the identity, cause, and influence of nonspecific binding remain topics of debate within the scientific community. In this review, we discuss the evolution of the concept of nonspecific binding over the past five decades based upon the thermodynamic, intermolecular, and structural perspectives to provide classification frameworks for biomolecular interactions. Further, we introduce various theoretical models that predict the expected behavior of biosensors in physiologically relevant environments to calculate the theoretical detection limit and to optimize sensor performance. We conclude by discussing existing practical approaches to tackle the nonspecific binding challenge in vitro for biosensing platforms and how we can both address and harness nonspecific interactions for in vivo systems.
  • Turning Food Protein Waste into Sustainable Technologies
    Item type: Review Article
    Peydayesh, Mohammad; Bagnani, Massimo; Soon, Wei Long; et al. (2023)
    Chemical Reviews
    For each kilogram of food protein wasted, between 15 and 750 kg of CO2 end up in the atmosphere. With this alarming carbon footprint, food protein waste not only contributes to climate change but also significantly impacts other environmental boundaries, such as nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, global freshwater use, change in land composition, chemical pollution, and biodiversity loss. This contrasts sharply with both the high nutritional value of proteins, as well as their unique chemical and physical versatility, which enable their use in new materials and innovative technologies. In this review, we discuss how food protein waste can be efficiently valorized not only by reintroduction into the food chain supply but also as a template for the development of sustainable technologies by allowing it to exit the food-value chain, thus alleviating some of the most urgent global challenges. We showcase three technologies of immediate significance and environmental impact: biodegradable plastics, water purification, and renewable energy. We discuss, by carefully reviewing the current state of the art, how proteins extracted from food waste can be valorized into key players to facilitate these technologies. We furthermore support analysis of the extant literature by original life cycle assessment (LCA) examples run ad hoc on both plant and animal waste proteins in the context of the technologies considered, and against realistic benchmarks, to quantitatively demonstrate their efficacy and potential. We finally conclude the review with an outlook on how such a comprehensive management of food protein waste is anticipated to transform its carbon footprint from positive to negative and, more generally, have a favorable impact on several other important planetary boundaries.
  • Halogen-Mediated Conversion of Hydrocarbons to Commodities
    Item type: Journal Article
    Pérez-Ramírez, Javier; Lin, Ronghe; Amrute, Amol P. (2017)
    Chemical Reviews
Publications 1 - 10 of 62