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Keith Andrews

@keithandrews.bsky.social
130 followers 151 following 4 posts

Supramolecular Chemist (PI @ Durham University) interested in enzyme mechanism and mimicry, cages and catalysis

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Keith Andrews @keithandrews.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Electric Field Catalysis is crazy cool – making reactions go faster without "touching" the atoms. But how do you line up the EF in solution when everything is tumbling around? Here we propose a strategy to do that in our Robust Organic Cage catalysts. doi.org/10.1039/d6sc...
The addition of charged substituents across an organic cage catalyst creates local oriented electric fields, comparable in strength to enzyme active sites, that reduce an acyl transfer reaction barrier by ∼3 kcal mol−1, according to DFT/CC modelling.
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Keith Andrews @keithandrews.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
How can Le Chatelier drive kinetics? @stefanborsley.bsky.social and I analyse Denton's organocatalytic Mitsunobu reaction and show water removal improvements outperform catalyst redesigns. Why? Removing water part way through the reaction resets the potential energy surface! doi.org/10.1021/jacs...
TOC graphic for JACS manuscipt, Kinetic Analysis of the Redox-Neutral Catalytic Mitsunobu Reaction: Dehydration, Kinetic Barriers, and Hopping between Potential Energy Surfaces, by Andrews and Borsley, depicting the catalytic Mitsunobu reaction catalytic cycle and two potential energy diagrams.
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Reposted by Keith Andrews
Beilstein-Institut @beilstein-institut.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Keith Andrews @keithandrews.bsky.social from Durham University @durham-university.bsky.social highlights some of the key advances in traditional #CavityCatalysis: ➡️ www.beilstein-journals.org/bjoc/art… #EnzymeMimics #SupramolecularCatalysis 💎🔓 #BJOC
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Keith Andrews @keithandrews.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Out now, and just in time for my first #chemsky post: my perspective on the emerging field of Robust Organic Cages as catalysts and enzyme mimics, including an overview of our contributions so far – doi.org/10.3762/bjoc...
Table of contents graphic for a chemical perpsective article, depicting two functionalised organic cage enzyme mimics with the title "Beyond symmetric self-assembly and effective molarity: unlocking functional enzyme mimics with robust organic cages."
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Reposted by Keith Andrews
Stefan Borsley @stefanborsley.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
A really fun project, delivered on the back of Peng-Lai’s fantastic efforts, ably assisted by Martin and of course our collaborators in Strasbourg, Alessandro and @giusepponelab.bsky.social, who taught us lots of polymer and materials chemistry. Thanks all!
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Reposted by Keith Andrews
Dave Leigh @profdaveleigh.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Peng-Lai, @stefanborsley.bsky.social, Martin & our collaborators Alessandro and @giusepponelab.bsky.social demonstrate how a catalyst transduces chemical energy to perform mechanical work in www.nature.com/articles/s41... in @nature.com. tinyurl.com/jny7nen5. Animation @scicommstudios.bsky.social😀
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Keith Andrews @keithandrews.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Quantifying information processing in the brain: possible #MindscapePodcast guest? (www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
cell.com
The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?
Zheng and Meister write about the paradoxical slowness of human behavior. Although our senses gather data at 109 bits/s, our overall information throughput is only 10 bits/s. This stark contrast touches on many fundamental aspects of brain function.
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