Title: 

Ubiquity of cubanes in bioinorganic relevant compounds 

Year of Publication:

2022

Authors:

Alec Bigness, Shivaiah Vaddypally, Michael J Zdilla, Jose L Mendoza-Cortes

Publisher:

APS March Meeting Abstracts

Abstract:

The heterocubane (commonly referred to as the cubane cluster, a molecular species comprising a cube-shaped core with different atom types at opposite corners) is a conserved general structure found in some of nature’s most crucial enzymes. Nature owes some of its most important reactions—like catalytic water splitting, nitrogen fixation, and the citric acid cycle—to the reactive versatility of the cubane structure. Few reviews have comprehensively highlighted the importance of this naturally occurring structure outside of (and prior to) the biological context, or have explicitly focused on the role of the cluster’s global coordination environment on reactivity and electronic structure across multiple core metal and core ligand identities. In this review we summarize the scope of existing synthetic chemistry in context of coordination environment and geometry. Connections are drawn between these systems and the natural …

URL:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010854521004422