Architecture and Chemistry

Richard Buckminster Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983)  was an american architect, designer and considered as a visionary.

He claimed that the natural analytic geometry of the universe was based on arrays of tetrahedra.

The most famous project developed by Fuller was indubitably his geodesic domes.

When Kroto and Smalley discovered in 1985 for the first time these molecules composed entirely of carbon, in the form of hollow sphere, there was a striking similarity in shape between the objets developed by Fuller and these kind of molecules.

And it was naturally that this compounds from this date were named fullerenes, it was a sort of tribute to his genius.

Raloxifen

Sorry, today I have a lot of work, but I post a small picture concerning one of my previous project.

You can see here the raloxifen in the estrogen receptor-alpha active site, with the piperidine appendage outside the pocket.

Corey’s Structural Reassignment of (+)Discodermolide

Ten years ago was published in the same Angewandte 2 outstandings Reviews.

The first from Corey was about the enantioselective reduction of carbonyl compounds with oxazaborolidine.

Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 1998, 37, 1986.

The second  from Nicolaou dealt with the chemical biology of epothilones.

Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 1998, 37, 2014.

Although the topics were different, they presented both the structure of the (+)discodermolide, but there is obviously a little problem…

Roquefortine

This week I have seen in JACS an ASAP Article of Madeleine M. Joullié entitled The Total Synthesis of Roquefortine C and a Rationale for the Thermodynamic Stability of Isoroquefortine C over Roquefortine C

I was not really interested by this publication at first sight , I thought another  diketopiperazine natural product. When I saw the name of the molecule I was more intriguing.

Roquefortine, of course, the famous french blue cheese ”Le Roquefort” so tasty….

Then I tried to learn more about this molecule. It is produced by a fungus Penicillium roqueforti , and It’s neurotoxic…my god…so I will to stop to eat that cheese???

In fact, I don’t really know, the LD50 is around 20mg/kg for mice (not 20mg of roquefort but of roquefortine), then imagine for a man…how many kilograms of roquefort you will have to eat ???

Iam sure you will be digusted before to have a headache.