Our latest paper on anion recognition is published in RSC Organic Chemistry Frontiers – we describe the impact of boronic acid position within macrocyclic Eu(III) complexes on their ability to selectively bind and sense AMP. We can now monitor phosphodiesterase activity with our AMP-selective probe - congratulations Sam and Colum!

Simon and Steve publish a review on lanthanide-based time-resolved FRET assays in Analysis & Sensing, part of a Special Issue on Metal-based Sensing.

Congratulations Georgie! Best of luck at your new job!

Congratulations to Lydia for winning an award for Best Poster Presentation at the RSC Early Career Researcher MASC meeting. Lydia presented her PhD project developing new conjugation methods for attaching lanthanide tags to cysteine residues of proteins. Lydia’s new Ln tags will enable new methods to probe protein dynamics by TR-FRET and NMR spectroscopy.

The Butler group hosted the RSC Early Career Researcher MASC (Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry) Meeting at Loughborough University. It was a fantastic day of supramolecular chemistry, presented by UK PhD, postdoctoral and early career researchers. We had 120 delegates, 52 posters and 12 oral presentations – super to have the community together in person again!

Congratulations to Caty for winning an award for Best Oral Presentation at the Macro group UK’s Young Researchers Meeting, held at Nottingham University. Caty presented her research into polymeric MRI contrast agents with improved image contrast – stay tuned in for our next publication in this area!

All the best to Simon, who has accepted a lectureship role at De Montfort University! Well done Simon!

Steve presents the Group’s research into supramolecular enzyme assays at the 7th International Conference on Molecular Sensors and Logic Gates, held in Dublin. Thanks to the organisers Prof. Thorri Gunnlaugsson, Dr Rob Elmes and Prof. Tony James for the invitation and super conference!

Congratulations to Caty for publishing her work in Polymer Chemistry this month. This collaborative project with Helen Willcock and Lorenzo Tei continues our development of macromolecular MRI contrast agents. Here, we control the size of core-shell particles and present a simple method to incorporate molecular imaging agents into the polymer shell.

Well done to Lydia for publishing some of her work on paramagnetic lanthanide tags in Magnetic Resonance this month. In collaboration with Gottfried Otting’s lab (ANU), we show that the local structure of a protein region is best determined using multiple tags at a single site, rather using multiple tagging sites. This has important practical implications because it’s much easier to identify a single tagging site than multiple ones on a protein surface!

Steve presents the groups work on Supramolecular Enzyme Assays utilising Lanthanide Luminescence, at the 55th ESBOC, Gregynog Wales. Thanks to Prof. Rob Field and the organisers for putting together an excellent meeting on biological organic chemistry.

Congratulations to Georgie for passing her PhD viva! Well done for producing a fantastic thesis ‘Synthesis and photophysical studies of anion-responsive lanthanide(III) probes’. Thanks to the examiners Dr Robert Elmes and Dr George Weaver for the first in-person viva in 2 years!

Sam and Graeme designed artwork summarising the work of the most recent Chem Sci paper in the form of a curling game, celebrating the recent Winter Olympics. The design was selected to be included in the journal volume and can be found inside the back cover. Well done Sam and Graeme!

We present a new series of europium(III)-based anion receptors capable of binding selectively to inorganic phosphate and AMP in aqueous and biological media. Many diseases result in changes in the concentrations of inorganic phosphates in the body, hence the development of sensors able to quantify and distinguish between these are valuable. Read more about this work here.

In this paper, we describe a method for determining the solution structure of a solvent-exposed polypeptide next to the active site of the enzyme IMP-1. In collaboration with Prof. Otting (ANU), we tagged three different sites on the protein with a paramagnetic metal complex to determine the position of the polypeptide with atomic resolution. Check out the paper here.

In this paper, we present a new europium(III) probe for monitoring the activity of sulfotransferase enzymes, by binding to the enzymatically generated phosphate anion, PAP. The paper features in the Supramolecular Chemistry of Anions themed collection. Check out the paper here.