Living GenoChemetics by hyphenating synthetic biology and synthetic chemistry in vivo

Marrying synthetic biology with synthetic chemistry provides a powerful approach toward natural product diversification, combining the best of both worlds: expediency and synthetic capability of biogenic pathways and chemical diversity enabled by organic synthesis. Biosynthetic pathway engineering can be employed to insert a chemically orthogonal tag into a complex natural scaffold affording the possibility of site-selective modification without employing protecting group strategies. Here we show that, by installing a sufficiently reactive handle (e.g., a C–Br bond) and developing compatible mild aqueous chemistries, synchronous biosynthesis of the tagged metabolite and its subsequent chemical modification in living culture can be achieved. This approach can potentially enable many new applications: for example, assay of directed evolution of enzymes catalyzing halo-metabolite biosynthesis in living cells or generating and following the fate of tagged metabolites and biomolecules in living systems. We report synthetic biological access to new-to-nature bromo-metabolites and the concomitant biorthogonal cross-coupling of halo-metabolites in living culture

18F-labelling innovations and their potential for clinical application

An impressive variety of new methodologies for the preparation of 18F-labelled tracers and ligands has appeared over the last decade. Most strategies of the newly developed radiofluorination methods predominantly aim at products of high molar activity by ‘late-stage’ labelling of small (hetero)aromatic molecules and the use of transition metals. This is accompanied by the improvement of technical procedures, like preparation of reactive [18F]fluoride and automated syntheses. The newly introduced procedures reflect a high innovative level and creativity in radio(pharmaceutical) chemistry at present, which are based on modern chemical methods and deep mechanistic insights. Taking also automation and quality control into consideration, major recently developed radiofluorination methods, most of those still under development, are compiled here in view of their potential for clinical PET imaging and thus the ability to advance molecular imaging