Amide bonds made in reverse

摘要

As the main chemical linkage found in proteins, the amide bond is incredibly important. What's more, amides are found in many synthetic polymers, biologically active naturally occurring compounds and pharmaceutically active small molecules. The usual way in which chemists make amides is by reacting a car-boxylic acid group (COOH), which is electron deficient, with an amine group (NHR, where R can be a hydrogen atom or a hydrocarbon group), which is electron rich. On page 1027 of this issue, Johnston and colleagues describe a fresh approach to forming amide bonds. In their process, the polarity of the reacting groups is reversed, thus overcoming some of the problems with existing methods.