Ruthenium-Induced Allylcarbamate Cleavage in Living Cells

摘要

Organometallics are increasingly gaining attention as tools in chemical biology owing to their distinguished physicochemical properties, reactivities, and three-dimensional structures.[1] Along these lines, the exceptional ability of organometallic compounds to catalyze a wide variety of chemical transformations has not yet been sufficiently exploited for chemical biology, but could yield bioactive molecules with novel properties.[2]-[4] For example, such catalysts could eventually be used to amplify signals by turning over a substrate multiple times, catalytically label or deactivate target biomolecules, or release prodrugs and all this in a cellular environment. However, designing catalysts which work under physiological conditions is a significant challenge owing to the combined presence of air, water, and a plethora of cellular components such as millimolar concentrations of thiols, which are prone to poison organometallic catalysts, especially under protic and aerobic conditions.