Month: November 2025

Tahoe, Omar, and Jesse report a new approach to oxetane synthesis that turns the classical mechanism of the Paternò–Büchi reaction on its head. Proud of our contribution to the 15th anniversary Chem Sci collection.

How do you functionalize a C–C bond? Cade, Caitlin, Matthieu, and Felix have a compelling method for migrating an oxygen atom into an unstrained C(sp3)–C(sp3) bond. In cyclic contexts, this enables the editing of a saturated carbocycle into a ring-expanded heterocycle. In acyclic contexts, it enables the permutation of the heavy atoms in a hydroxymethyl …

In our second collaborative publication with the Paton group as part of SuPRCat, Katie led a terrific team (Rodrigo, Mihai, Grace, and Sam) to show that base-metal complexes of carboxylic acids can engage in direct C–H lactonizations reactions upon LMCT photoactivation. The surprising mechanistic insight from these experiments is that the reaction does not involve …