Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded for asymmetric organocatalysis
(nobelprize.org)
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2021 was awarded to Benjamin List and David MacMillan for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.
Until the end of the twentieth century, chemists knew only two types of catalysts (substances that accelerate chemical reactions).
In the former, metal atoms are responsible for acceleration, and in the latter, enzymes.
Metal catalysts are used in industry, but reactions on catalysts with metal atoms are usually nonspecific, that is, it is difficult to control the product at the outlet.
Enzymes are found in living organisms, and they are just extremely specific, that is, they accelerate a strictly defined reaction or somewhat.
But inside a human or bacterial cell, there may simply not be an enzyme suitable for a specific reaction that needs to be launched on an industrial scale.
This year's laureates have discovered a third type of catalysis.
Benjamin List drew attention to the fact that some catalysts belong to both types at once: for example, in human cells there are many enzymes, in the active center of which a metal atom is located.
But some enzymes can cope without it, dispensing with only amino acids - which means that amino acids can be made catalysts by themselves, isolated from a large enzyme molecule.
So, List found out that proline - one of the smallest amino acids - itself can act as a catalyst.
David McMillan came to the same idea from a different angle.
He worked with catalysts based on metal atoms and looked for ways to make them more specific.
He even picked up the conditions under which this might be possible, but they turned out to be too complex for industrial applications.
So, Macmillan switched to small organic molecules and replaced the metal atom in the catalyst with an iminium ion.
The works of both laureates were published in the same year 2000, and since then there are more and more organic catalysts.
Among their advantages are not only low cost, but also, they are able to work in a chain, to reduce the time for the production of complex organic molecules.
In addition, due to their specificity, they allow one to obtain only the required isomer of a substance - therefore organocatalysis was called asymmetric.
This is very important, for example, in cases where a drug exists in two mirror forms, but works directly as a drug in only one.
In 2020, the prize went to biochemists - Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, for the development of CRISPR/Cas9 technology, which allows for pointwise editing of DNA.
Source:
- Nobelprize.org: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2021/press-release/
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