What a Simple Organic Catalyst Can Do Is Almost Magical

摘要

The work reported in paper #6 has three features that make it noteworthy: it uses a simple organic molecule, proline, as a catalyst; it results in products that are specific en-antiomers; and it opens up a fresh route to making carbohydrates easily. In this last respect it promises to reinvigorate a long-established branch of chemistry by making it possible to construct a wide variety of new molecules. Catalysts are almost invariably metal compounds and for a very good reason: they can attract molecules to themselves and thereby open them up to specific reactions which depend on the manner in which the molecules interact with the metal. There are hundreds of metal catalysts performing this service in innumerable reactions ranging from enzymes in living cells to inorganic compounds in large-scale industrial processes.