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Record W4414335945 · doi:10.1038/s41467-025-61857-0

Bioinspired transfer methylation enabled by a photoactive reagent

2025· article· en· W4414335945 on OpenAlexafffund
Ding Zhang, Weiqiu Liang, Zhihan Zhang, Zheng Hu, Zhibo Liu, Chao‐Jun Li, Jianbin Li

Bibliographic record

VenueNature Communications · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldChemistry
TopicRadical Photochemical Reactions
Canadian institutionsCentre in Green Chemistry and Catalysis
FundersUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignChinese University of Hong KongNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaDalian University of TechnologyMinistry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of ChinaNational Natural Science Foundation of ChinaCanada Research ChairsFonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les TechnologiesMcGill University
KeywordsMethylationReagentMethyltransferaseReactivity (psychology)Natural productEpigenetics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Radical methylation ranks among the most important yet challenging transformations in chemistry and biology, which often involves small and unstable radical intermediates, such as the methyl radical, and results in low reactivity and poor selectivity. Herein, we report a photoactive, biomimetic reagent to address some facets of these challenges by leveraging a bulky and stabilised α-aminomethyl radical, which can offer enhanced control over radical generation and transfer. Our bioinspired transfer methylation protocol enables direct and selective C(sp2)–H methylation across a wide spectrum of heteroarenes, from simple scaffolds to complex drug molecules, including the thus far elusive C4-methylation of free quinolines. Mechanistic studies reveal that the unique α-aminomethyl radical intermediate undergoes an addition-elimination sequence reminiscent of natural methyltransferases and yields balanced reactivity and selectivity. Radical methylation ranks among the most important yet challenging transformations in chemistry and biology, which often involves small and unstable radical intermediates, and results in low reactivity and poor selectivity. Herein, the authors report a bioinspired transfer methylation protocol for the direct and selective C(sp2)-H methylation of heteroarenes.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: Bench or experimental
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.872
Threshold uncertainty score0.679

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0010.000
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.013
GPT teacher head0.301
Teacher spread0.287 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designBench or experimental
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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