Professor Jay Siegel of Health Science Platform at Tianjin University recently published a research communication inAngewandte Chemie International Edition, giving the critique of the Cahn-Ingold-Prelog conception of molecular chirality.

Cahn-Ingold-Prelog proposed their famous nomenclature of centers, axes and planes and believed that molecular chirality is reducible to causative ‘elements of chirality’. Siegel group made a serious of chiral indenocorannulenes that possess no suitable stereogenic elements within the center, axes or plane, yet these are chiral molecules that have been resolved into enantiomeric forms and their absolute configuration were determined by vibrational circular dichroism and electronic circular dichroism. Thus, they are contradiction to the Cahn-Ingold-Prelog basis for chiral factorization.

This new set of chiral bowl-shaped molecules opens an avenue to the study of chiral materials obviating the discussion of chiral elements. They emphasize the distinction between chirality and stereoisomerism pointed out thirty years ago. Their general physical properties and propensity for shape-selective molecular recognition bodes well for the development of cognates capable of replacing classical chiral scaffolds. ACIE contains review articles covering all aspects of chemistry andits current impact factoris 12.102.