Designing Redox‐Stable Cobalt–Polypyridyl Complexes for Redox Flow Batteries: Spin‐Crossover Delocalizes Excess Charge

Redox‐active organometallic molecules offer a promising avenue for increasing the energy density and cycling stability of redox flow batteries. The molecular properties change dramatically as the ligands are functionalized and these variations allow for improving the solubility and controlling the redox potentials to optimize their performance when used as electrolytes. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to predict and design the stability of redox‐active molecules to enhance cyclability in a rational manner, in part because the relationship between electronic structure and redox behavior has been neither fully understood nor systematically explored. In this work, rational strategies for exploiting two common principles in organometallic chemistry for enhancing the robustness of pseudo‐octahedral cobalt–polypyridyl complexes are developed. Namely, the spin‐crossover between low and high‐spin states and the chelation effect emerging from replacing three bidentate ligands with two tridentate analogues. Quantum chemical models are used to conceptualize the approach and make predictions that are tested against experiments by preparing prototype Co‐complexes and profiling them as catholytes and anolytes. In good agreement with the conceptual predictions, very stable cycling performance over 600 cycles is found.     

Atg7 Activates an Autophagy-Essential Ubiquitin-like Protein Atg8 through Multi-Step Recognition

Atg8 is a unique ubiquitin-like protein that is covalently conjugated with a phosphatidylethanolamine through reactions similar to ubiquitination and plays essential roles in autophagy. Atg7 is the E1 enzyme for Atg8, and it activates the C-terminal Gly116 of Atg8 using ATP. Here, we report the crystal structure of Atg8 bound to the C-terminal domain of Atg7 in an unprecedented mode. Atg8 neither contacts with the central β-sheet nor binds to the catalytic site of Atg7, both of which were observed in previously reported Atg7–Atg8 structures. Instead, Atg8 binds to the C-terminal α-helix and crossover loop, thereby changing the autoinhibited conformation of the crossover loop observed in the free Atg7 structure into a short helix and a disordered loop. Mutational analyses suggested that this interaction mode is important for the activation reaction. We propose that Atg7 recognizes Atg8 through multiple steps, which would be necessary to induce a conformational change in Atg7 that is optimal for the activation reaction.     

Chiral spin crossover iron(II) complex, fac-Λ-[Fe(HL)3](ClO4)2·EtOH (HL = 2-methylimidazol-4-yl-methylideneamino-R-(+)-1-methylphenyl)

A chiral spin crossover iron(II) complex, fac-Λ-[Fe^II(HL^R)₃](ClO₄)₂·EtOH was synthesized and its crystal structures in both the high-spin (HS) and low-spin (LS) states were determined, where HL^R denotes 2-methylimidazol-4-yl-methylideneamino-R-(+)-1-methylphenyl. The complex assumes octahedral coordination geometry of N₆ donor atoms by three bidentate ligands HL^R. The complex exists as the facial-Λ-isomer of fac-Λ-[Fe^II(HL^R)₃]²⁺ of the possible geometrical fac- and mer-isomers and the Δ- and Λ-enantiomorphs. The X-ray structural analyses revealed that the R-form of the ligand (HL^R) induces the fac-Λ-isomer of fac-Λ-[Fe^II(HL^R)₃]²⁺ and the S-form of the ligand (HL^S) induces the fac-Δ-isomer of fac-Δ-[Fe(HL^S)₃]²⁺. The complex fac-Λ-[Fe^II(HL^R)₃](ClO₄)₂·EtOH shows a complete steep spin crossover between the HS and the LS states at T_1/2 = 195 K.     

The ground states of iron(III) porphines: role of entropy-enthalpy compensation, Fermi correlation, dispersion, and zero-point energies

Porphyrins are much studied due to their biochemical relevance and many applications. The density functional TPSSh has previously accurately described the energy of close-lying electronic states of transition metal systems such as porphyrins. However, a recent study questioned this conclusion based on calculations of five iron(III) porphines. Here, we compute the geometries of 80 different electronic configurations and the free energies of the most stable configurations with the functionals TPSSh, TPSS, and B3LYP. Zero-point energies and entropy favor high-spin by ~ 4 kJ/mol and 0-10 kJ/mol, respectively. When these effects are included, and all electronic configurations are evaluated, TPSSh correctly predicts the spin of all the four difficult phenylporphine cases and is within the lower bound of uncertainty of any known theoretical method for the fifth, iron(III) chloroporphine. Dispersion computed with DFT-D3 favors low-spin by 3-53 kJ/mol (TPSSh) or 4-15 kJ/mol (B3LYP) due to the attractive r^− 6 term and the shorter distances in low-spin. The very large and diverse corrections from TPSS and TPSSh seem less consistent with the similarity of the systems than when calculated from B3LYP. If the functional-specific corrections are used, B3LYP and TPSSh are of equal accuracy, and TPSS is much worse, whereas if the physically reasonable B3LYP-computed dispersion effect is used for all functionals, TPSSh is accurate for all systems. B3LYP is significantly more accurate when dispersion is added, confirming previous results.     

Crossover Position Drives Chromosome Remodeling for Accurate Meiotic Chromosome Segregation

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Male and female recombination landscapes of diploid Arabidopsis arenosa

The number and placement of meiotic crossover events during meiosis have important implications for the fidelity of chromosome segregation as well as patterns of inheritance. Despite the functional importance of recombination, recombination landscapes vary widely among and within species, and this can have a strong impact on evolutionary processes. A good knowledge of recombination landscapes is important for model systems in evolutionary and ecological genetics, since it can improve interpretation of genomic patterns of differentiation and genome evolution, and provides an important starting point for understanding the causes and consequences of recombination rate variation. Arabidopsis arenosa is a powerful evolutionary genetic model for studying the molecular basis of adaptation and recombination rate evolution. Here, we generate genetic maps for 2 diploid A. arenosa individuals from distinct genetic lineages where we have prior knowledge that meiotic genes show evidence of selection. We complement the genetic maps with cytological approaches to map and quantify recombination rates, and test the idea that these populations might have distinct patterns of recombination. We explore how recombination differs at the level of populations, individuals, sexes and genomic regions. We show that the positioning of crossovers along a chromosome correlates with their number, presumably a consequence of crossover interference, and discuss how this effect can cause differences in recombination landscape among sexes or species. We identify several instances of female segregation distortion. We found that averaged genome-wide recombination rate is lower and sex differences subtler in A. arenosa than in Arabidopsis thaliana.