NEWS OF THE WEEK
CHALLENGING PEER REVIEW
ranking member of Smith’s committee, fired back in a letter of her own. NSF says both letters are under review. Smith is also circulating a draft bill that would require the NSF director to affirm three new criteria for POLICY: Congressman questions every research grant: that the project is in the interests some social sciences grants, wants of the U.S., that it addresses problems of the “utmost new standards for awards importance to society at large,” and that it doesn’t duplicate other work at NSF or other federal agencies. The draft bill—which has not been introduced yet— LIMINATING WHAT he sees as wasteful spending also asks the White House to study whether the addiand adding new criteria to peer review of National tional criteria could work at other science agencies. Science Foundation grants are on the agenda of “It is really amazing to me that people are trying to Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas), chair of the House of micromanage NSF,” says Luis A. Echegoyen, a chemRepresentatives Science, Space & Technology Commitistry professor at the University of Texas, El Paso, and tee. Smith is questioning the legitimacy of several NSF a former director of the agency’s Chemistry Division. social sciences grants and recommending changes to NSF’s peer review system is a model worldwide, he the agency’s award process. His proposals could have adds. ripple effects on other science programs. The draft bill also threatens NSF’s focus on fundaIn a letter to NSF Acting Director Cora B. Marrett, he mental research, says Judith S. Bond, president of the wondered whether the cited social sciences awards meet Federation of American Societies for Experimental the agency’s intellectual merit criteria. Biology. “Basic science has long-range The grants are for studies on a potpourri implications for health and prosperof topics, such as the International ity, but those outcomes might be years Criminal Court and the history of scien- “It is really amazing away,” she says. to me that people tific conservation in South America. Smith says critics are deliberately But Smith is oversteping his bounds misinterpreting the proposed legislaare trying to in investigating individual grants, Rep. micromanage NSF.” tion, which he says simply adds a layer Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), of accountability.—ANDREA WIDENER — LUIS A. ECHEGOYEN
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
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Smith
IRON SPURS C–H BOND REACTIVITY ORGANOMETALLICS: Catalyst creates drug scaffolds quickly
F Iron catalyst transforms linear alkyl azides into cyclic amines via C–H functionalization.
H
N3
L = diethyl ether Boc = tert-butoxycarbonyl
INDING INSPIRATION in the iron-based en-
zymes that metabolize drugs and other chemicals, chemists have come up with a catalyst that turns unreactive C–H bonds into useful C–N bonds (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1233701). The transformation gives chemists rapid access to saturated heterocycles, which are common structural motifs in drugs and other Cl Cl biologically relevant molecules. “One of the grand challenges in orN N ganic synthesis and organometallic Fe research is to be Boc able to render L Cl , Boc2O N every portion –N2 of a molecule into a reactive entity,” says Theodore A. Betley, CEN.ACS.ORG
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the Harvard University chemistry professor who developed the catalyst with colleague Elisabeth T. Hennessy. To that end, Betley and Hennessey created a catalyst that can transform linear alkyl azides into cyclic amines. “What we were able to do is render very unreactive C–H bonds into a reactive component by making a catalyst that has the ability to pull apart the C–H bond and then also catalyze the follow-up reaction, which makes a new carbon-heteroatom bond,” Betley explains. The key to getting the catalyst to work, he says, was to ensure the electrons in the catalyst’s iron atom were in the same configuration as they are in natural metabolic iron enzymes. “All we did was look at the design principle that makes the natural system so effective and try to mimic it,” Betley tells C&EN. “In doing so, I think we made something that might be even more reactive than what you find in nature.” “Betley and Hennessy’s method provides a solution for a long-standing, unsolved problem,” comments Tom G. Driver, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who studies how to transform C–H bonds into amines. “The method provides access to a wide range of N-heterocycles that were not accessible with other methods. I suspect the work will resonate in the synthetic community by enabling construction of these important scaffolds through manipulation of C–H bonds.”—BETHANY HALFORD
MAY 6, 2013
