A lot of knots

Abstract

Sailors, take note: chemists may soon claim the title of makers of the most complex knots. The latest molecular loop the loop to come from David A. Leigh’s lab at the University of Manchester features 378 atoms and a record-breaking 12 crossings. The previous record holder had 9 crossings . The new knot is a trefoil of trefoils triskelion—a three-way crossing of three-way crossings with three limbs radiating from its center. The chemists also prepared an isomer of the knot that switches up the structure of the central trefoil ( Science 2022, DOI: 10.1126/science.abm9247 ). “The most important feature of the work is not really the complexity of the knot, but rather that it’s such a large, extended, essentially 2D array of well-defined crossings,” Leigh says in an email. He points out that the knot consists of one continuous strand. To create the knot, Leigh’s group used Vernier templating, which