"Inventing new chemical reactions is like inventing new chemical tools for building molecular architecture."

The work is in the area of organocatalysis which is a reasonably hot field. More importantly, this paper describes the capacity to build complex poly-oxygenated systems with high levels of enantioselectivity using simple starting materials and an amino acid (proline) as the asymmetric catalyst. This work has enabled rapid access—only two chemical steps—to differentially protected carbohydrates, a mainstay building block that is employed in a large variety of bio-X applications.

I believe so. In many ways it opens the door to the rapid synthesis of specialized carbohydrates. This area has been traditionally viewed as a synthetic quagmire, requiring anywhere from 8-14 steps to build carbohydrates of defined stereochemistry and specific protecting group patterns. We expect (hope) this chemistry will find application in building molecules for SAR (structure-activity relationship) in medicinal chemistry, unnatural carbohydrates for the food industry, and biological probes for bio-X applications.

Inventing new chemical reactions is like inventing new chemical tools for building molecular architecture. Using this analogy, we used to build carbohydrates in the way a lone builder would build a house, for example, using a hammer and tong approach. Now we have invented the equivalent of a construction crew with all the capacity to rapidly and efficiently build the necessary architecture in an extremely short period of time.

My lab has been involved in the area of organocatalysis for six years. We have been interested in addressing chemical reactions that were previously thought to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. In this case, we have developed the first examples of enantioselective catalytic aldehyde-aldehyde aldol reactions. Previous to our work, this was thought to be a highly elusive transformation for a variety of reasons.