Abstract
EVOLUTION MAY BE based on “survival of the fittest,” but when it comes to selecting the best catalysts, that dictum doesn’t always hold. A research team has shown that one can select the best catalysts from combinatorial libraries of candidates by instead using the principle of “survival of the weakest”—that is, the most unstable catalytic intermediates make for the best catalysts. The approach could make it possible to discover catalysts more quickly for syntheses of drugs and other products. It has been difficult to find selection methods to separate the cream of the crop (the fastest catalysts) from the dross when screening libraries to identify highly active catalysts. Now, theoretical chemist F. Matthias Bickelhaupt of Free University of Amsterdam, catalysis specialist Joost N. H. Reek of the University of Amsterdam, and coworkers have developed an innovative selection strategy for such experiments based on survival of the weakest intermediates ( Nat. Chem., DOI: 10.1038/nchem.614). The researchers ...
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