Far-out chiral C–H activation

C–H activation is the art of snipping specific bonds between carbon and hydrogen atoms on an organic molecule to graft a new functional group in place of the relatively unreactive H atom. Over the years, chemists have devised increasingly effective and selective ways to do C-H activation . In a new Science paper, Jin-Quan Yu and his team at Scripps Research in California describe how they stereoselectively snipped a C–H bond to add aryl groups to the position three or four atoms away from the carbonyl carbon of cyclic carboxylic acids (2024, DOI: 10.1126/science.ado1246 ). Chemists have gotten pretty good at stereoselectively adding atoms one or two spaces away from carbonyl groups, which coordinate to metal catalysts to direct them to the correct place to carry out the reaction. Proximity to a carbonyl group also makes a C–H bond easier to break . The ability to also add a stereocenter