By Irene Hsiao
Guangbin Dong’s lab has made a new stride forward in the activation of carbon-carbon bonds, the stable bonds that form the backbone of all organic compounds. In “Deacylative transformations of ketones via aromatization-promoted C-C bond activation,” published 21 March in Nature, Dong and coworkers, in collaboration with Peng Liu’s lab at the University of Pittsburgh, present a method for cleaving the C-C bond in ketones with a transition metal catalyst using common reagents under mild conditions. Their discovery opens possibilities for unprecedented transformations of ketones, which are commonly found in natural and industrial products.