Plasma proteome profiling of healthy subjects undergoing bed rest reveals unloading-dependent changes linked to muscle atrophy

Inactivity and unloading induce skeletal muscle atrophy, loss of strength and detrimental metabolic effects. Bed rest is a model to study the impact of inactivity on the musculoskeletal system. It not only provides information for bed-ridden patients care, but it is also a ground-based spaceflight analogue used to mimic the challenges of long space missions for the human body. In both cases, it would be desirable to develop a panel of biomarkers to monitor muscle atrophy in a minimally invasive way at point of care to limit the onset of muscle loss in a personalized fashion

Electric-Field-Induced Coupling of Aryl Iodides with a Nickel(0) Complex

The influence of electric fields has been postulated as a major factor for rapid catalysis in enzymatic systems. Here, we show that external electric fields can modulate the reactivity of an otherwise kinetically inert transition metal complex to affect a coupling reaction. An air-stable nickel(0) complex is demonstrated to exhibit no reactivity towards the oxidative addition of aryl iodides at room temperature. However, when an external electric field was applied to this reaction solution with a scanning tunneling microscope, the biaryl coupling product was detected in-situ through single-molecule conductance measurements and ex-situ through high-resolution mass spectrometry. These results highlight the importance of electric field effects in reaction chemistry, and demonstrate the application of STM studies towards electric field induced organometallic transformations