Collective synthesis of natural products by means of organocascade catalysis

Organic chemists are now able to synthesize small quantities of almost any known natural product, given sufficient time, resources and effort. However, translation of the academic successes in total synthesis to the large-scale construction of complex natural products and the development of large collections of biologically relevant molecules present significant challenges to synthetic chemists. Here we show that the application of two nature-inspired techniques, namely organocascade catalysis and collective natural product synthesis, can facilitate the preparation of useful quantities of a range of structurally diverse natural products from a common molecular scaffold. The power of this concept has been demonstrated through the expedient, asymmetric total syntheses of six well-known alkaloid natural products: strychnine, aspidospermidine, vincadifformine, akuammicine, kopsanone and kopsinine.     

Bone marrow cells adopt the phenotype of other cells by spontaneous cell fusion

Recent studies have demonstrated that transplanted bone marrow cells can turn into unexpected lineages including myocytes, hepatocytes, neurons and many others. A potential problem, however, is that reports discussing such 'transdifferentiation' in vivo tend to conclude donor origin of transdifferentiated cells on the basis of the existence of donor-specific genes such as Y-chromosome markers. Here we demonstrate that mouse bone marrow cells can fuse spontaneously with embryonic stem cells in culture in vitro that contains interleukin-3. Moreover, spontaneously fused bone marrow cells can subsequently adopt the phenotype of the recipient cells, which, without detailed genetic analysis, might be interpreted as 'dedifferentiation' or transdifferentiation.     

Capture rates of reptiles and amphibians on black-tailed prairie dog ( Cynomys ludovicianus ) colonies and on uncolonized prairie in Colorado

Prairie dog eradication negatively affects dependent wildlife. Assessing the effects of prairie dog activities on reptiles and amphibians may depend upon the efficacy of trapping designs. We compared capture rates of reptiles and amphibians on black-tailed prairie dog ( Cynomys ludovicianus ) colonies and on adjacent uncolonized short-grass prairie, using funnel traps and pitfall traps with drift fences, as well as ground captures. We captured 152 reptiles and amphibians representing 10 species. We captured 51.3% of all reptiles and amphibians on colonies, compared to 48.7% from uncolonized sites. Overall, captures of reptiles and amphibians were similar on colonies and uncolonized sites for all capture methods combined. We achieved higher capture rates on uncolonized sites using funnel traps and pitfall traps but higher capture rates on colonies for ground captures. For all years on all sites combined, we captured significantly more animals in funnel traps (52.6%), surpassing pitfall trap captures (23.0%) and ground captures (24.3%). We recommend using multiple Y-shaped drift fence arrays ≥7.6 m in length, funnel traps with double-ended openings, and black-colored pitfall traps with opening diameters ≥30 cm.