It Is Never Too Early to Start: Educating Health Science Students to Become Future Educators.

Teachers lead, learn, and live as they walk through the journey of education, experiencing humanity in and outside their classrooms. No task is small when it comes to teaching; it is a craftsmanship that takes years to develop, and never too early to get started. In this commentary, the authors extract thoughtful viewpoints from years of teaching experience regarding how to inspire and engage more students to become educators.

Synthesis, spectroscopic characterization, and reactivity of water-tolerant Eu3+-based precatalysts.

We report the synthesis, spectroscopic characterization, and reactivity of Eu(3+) in the presence of a new set of chiral ligands designed for the aqueous, enantioselective Mukaiyama aldol reaction. Luminescence and NMR measurements were used to characterize the coordination environments of the Eu(3+)-based precatalysts, and this data is compared with yields and stereoselectivities. In addition to structure-function relationships, we found that, in the presence of excess hexadentate ligands, Eu(3+) is coordinatively saturated, and subsequently, the reactivity of the precatalysts is reduced.

Study of the lanthanide-catalyzed, aqueous, asymmetric Mukaiyama aldol reaction.

The development of efficient methods for the asymmetric Mukaiyama aldol reaction in aqueous solution has received great attention. We have developed a new series of chiral lanthanide-containing complexes that produce Mukaiyama aldol products with outstanding enantioselectivities. In this paper, we describe an optimized ligand synthesis, trends in stereoselectivity that result from changing lanthanide ions, and an exploration of substrate scope that includes aromatic and aliphatic aldehydes and silyl enol ethers derived from aromatic and aliphatic ketones.

The role of water in lanthanide-catalyzed carbon-carbon bond formation.

Luminescence-decay measurements in combination with high-performance liquid chromatography analyses were used to study the relationship between rates of catalysis and water-coordination numbers of europium-based precatalysts in the aqueous Mukaiyama aldol reaction. A correlation between reactivity and water-coordination number was observed and is reported here.

Preparation, purification, and characterization of lanthanide complexes for use as contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging.

Polyaminopolycarboxylate-based ligands are commonly used to chelate lanthanide ions, and the resulting complexes are useful as contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Many commercially available ligands are especially useful because they contain functional groups that allow for fast, high-purity, and high-yielding conjugation to macromolecules and biomolecules via amine-reactive activated esters and isothiocyanate groups or thiol-reactive maleimides. While metalation of these ligands is considered common knowledge in the field of bioconjugation chemistry, subtle differences in metalation procedures must be taken into account when selecting metal starting materials.