Friday Fun - Maitotoxin Watch

For those keeping tabs on K.C. Nicolaou's potential career capstone, the group has published another fragment (QRSTUVWXYZA') of the ladder polyether maitotoxin. By my count (and thanks to their handy graphic, below), they've now formed 30 of the 32 requisite rings, meaning we'll likely see a completed total synthesis in the next few years.*

Top: Maitotoxin
Bottom: Previously disclosed fragments
Source: Nicolaou et.al. | JACS 2014 ASAP

When Nicolaou's group announced the move to Rice, one of my first thoughts was "who gets to personally chaperone the maitotoxin fragments to their new home?" I'm picturing combination-locked black suitcases handcuffed to postdocs' wrists, but perhaps the samples just went in the back of a U-Haul truck with all the other lab equipment.

Happy Friday,

See Arr Oh

--
*Assuming they can work out the ring fusion and selective sulfate chemistry - not trivial tasks by any means!

USC to Acquire Scripps?

Other perspectives: The Scientist, Science, L.A. Times.

Well, that's not something you see every day.

Courtesy of U-T San Diego* - with bonus Derek Lowe quotes! - comes talk of the University of Southern California taking over gobbling up "acquiring" the Scripps Research Institute. I'm sure we'll hear much more about the motivations as events develop, but the early suggestion involves cold hard ca$h - declining NIH funding paired with expiry of major pharma partnerships on the Scripps side, billions in fundraising** on the USC side. I've been hearing about salary squabbles and shrinking department budgets at Scripps, but didn't realize things had gotten to this point.

Clouds in parking lot, 2014

I don't see the press releases on either side that U-T San Diego alludes to,
[UPDATE 6/19 - Here's the releases!]
Perhaps someone on the inside of either institution knows more? seearroh_AT_gmail

*The guys who helped break the Nicolaou to Rice saga!
** I mean, they did just get all that money from Dr. Dre...

Abstract Coloring Champion

I can find no words to adequately describe this picture. It's just so....fitting.

That's rainbow-colored Taxol in the background, for those unaware 
Image courtesy Rice University, Union-Tribune, San Diego

Nicolaou to Rice - Official!

KCN, all smiles, after confirming
what we all knew anywa

(Click here for the Rice Press Release, issued Thursday, Sept. 20)

Some interesting tidbits about the move:

- The $6 Million** Dollar Man: No, not Col. Steve Austin...KCN! The figure is accurate, as first reported in the comments of Derek's blog.

- "Formidable Alliance against cancer." K.C. is apparently the crown jewel for an as-yet-unannounced super-team* of scientists. Probably doesn't hurt that M.D. Anderson, a leading Houston hospital, is down the street. The CPRIT file that listed Nicolaou includes funds for 8 other "Established" professors; if Rice gets 'em all, they'll be a force for biomedical research.

- Family Connection: As stated elsewhere (and mentioned through personal communications earlier in the week) the fact that his daughter Colette, a Psychology lecturer, works at Rice certainly factored into the decision.

- Timeline: Looks like the move won't happen immediately. Having announced the move, K.C. now waits for his new lab space to be custom built in the Rice BioScience Research Collaborative. Perhaps he'll have time in the intervening year to write "Classics IV - A New Hope"

*(Update, 9/20 - This presser has to have some of the best superlatives ever used to describe a chemist. In sixteen paragraphs, it calls him "great leader," "legendary," "cancer drug pioneer," "formidable," "prodigious intellect," "distinguished," "super-star researcher," "transformative," and "devot[ed] to the craft of teaching." Wow. Whomever wrote this release, I want them to do my obit someday!)
**(Update, 9/22 - The author of this article points out that K.C.'s total compensation will be closer to 9 million dollars, after Rice raises a $3 million matching fund. Ye Gods.)

A Few More Thoughts on Faculty Moves

While looking back at the map I made for my earlier post today, I had a few "deeper thoughts" about the faculty moving process.

- Is it just me, or do all the moves seem to be to warmer places? Even funnier, some mention it in the press releases following their moves. Take this gem, from Greg Fu:

"...it does not hurt, [Fu] adds, that he gets to leave those cold Cambridge winters behind."

A future Prof practices
for his first faculty move

- Although I claim that the moves are often prestige-based, i.e. to move into a highly-ranked university, several of these moves buck the trend. Finn moved from Scripps (#7) to Georgia Tech (#26), and Woerpel from Irvine (#26) to NYU (#67). If Nicolaou does indeed move to Rice, he'll be moving from #7 to #33. Now, I realize there's other rankings in town (see Chronicle, Times), and the "big fish" mentality suggests these rankings will improve once the new recruit sets foot on campus. But I'd still argue that some of these were lateral moves at best.

- What's up with the Pacific Northwest? The South? The Rockies? How come nobody from these places seems to move around? Either everyone in these locations is completely satisfied with their lives, positions, and income, or there's some dynamics between the East and Left Coast that I haven't yet figured out. 

Readers, what do you think?

Chemistry Bumper Cars

By now, most folks on the chemblogosphere have heard the rumbles about K.C. Nicolaou's possible departure from Scripps. His landing spot looks to be Rice University, in Houston, aided by a generous multi-million dollar "golden parachute." Followup comments posted on Chemjobber and In the Pipeline saw speculation run rampant regarding other Scripps synthetic chemists, including M.G. Finn, Jin-Quan Yu, Phil Baran, and Dale Boger.

Wow. Does everyone have the moving bug?

I seem to recall Kyle over at The Chem Blog drawing us a convenient map a few years back, during another busy moving season (2005, I believe?). The past two years have proven quite busy as well, with no less than an entire ChemBark post entitled "Nocera to Harvard!" (vide infra).

Without further ado, I present my highly-researched, but definitely not-to-scale, map of synthetic faculty moves, 2011-2012.

Legend (Updated 9/20):
1.  Keith (purple) Woerpel, Irvine to NYU
2.  John (Berkeley blue) Hartwig, UIUC to Berkeley
3.  Vy (green) Dong, Toronto to Irvine
4.  Dan (crimson) Nocera, MIT to Harvard
5.  O(maroon) Yaghi, UCLA to Berkeley
6.  M.(Goldenrod) Finn, Scripps to Georgia Tech
7.  K.(Cyprus orange) Nicolaou, Scripps to Rice (confirmed!)
8.  Greg Fu(schia), MIT to Caltech
9.  (Rust)em Ismagilov, Chicago to Caltech
10. Paul (cyan) Chirik, Cornell to Princeton

I've been searching for a chemistry faculty movement metaphor. At the end of the NFL season, reporters write about the "coaching carousel," where coaches switch jobs circuitously, trapped on an employment merry-go-round. Well, that's not quite right here. Chemists usually move away for good, and there's clearly a directionality to the moves: towards more money, higher prestige, or warmer climes. Perhaps a Ferris wheel? Nah: it implies "up" or "down," a good view of the situation...and far too smooth a ride. Negative on the Gravitron, though grads and postdocs might feel like they're smashed by the pressing gravity* of an upcoming move.

I've got it: Bumper cars! Everyone starts out hesitantly, driving around in circles, hesitant to make first contact. After a few minutes, though, it's a free-for-all, everyone bouncing off each other, crashing, laughing, sparks flying off the ceiling. In the end, no one ends up where they started, and everyone has headaches. (Bear with me, it's a work in progress, doesn't yet have the oomph of a "Manifest Destiny" or "fiscal cliff.")

Faculty jostle for top spots like, well, you get it...

Credit: UK Telegraph

Are faculty moves unavoidable? It's true that the grass is always greener. But, if you're already a professor at a Top 20 institution, you likely receive the lion's share of grant monies, decent media coverage, and your pick from top-shelf graduate students. So why go? Some moves are nostalgia-driven - the Prof. wants to return home to a welcoming parade, having "done good." Some moves try to fix the two-body problem. Some happen because of missed tenure, or a feeling that it's "just time." Maybe in today's uncertain economy, it's just best to assume you won't be in any job longer than ten years...with a handful of exceptions.

Readers: Know of any more high-profile U-Hauls being loaded this academic season? If the "Chemistry Bumper Cars" trend persists, this might yet become an annual post.

P.S. Heard about a move I missed? Email me at seearroh_AT_gmail, and I'll add it here!

*I completely understand, having been involved with two moves in grad and postdoc.

Art Antics

In case you hadn't heard, B.R.S.M. is running a pictorial carnival of sorts. His angle? To celebrate the upcoming 66th birthday of venerable chemist - and serial "chemical artist" - K.C. Nicolaou. In keeping with the spirit of the game, we were asked to limit our artistic efforts to the same five molecules. Shown below are my (admittedly ridiculous) entries. 

Vancomycin: Profiles, Pathways, and Space Monsters
(with apologies to Jeff Seeman)

Really, it's what I'd always expected to see published...
(The mustache substitutes for the bridging isopropylidene!)

Abstract Coloring Book: Take Two

The "colored abstract bug" spreads quickly. Since I began cataloguing appearances, they've cropped up in several other journals, including at least 3 examples in just the last 48 hours.


First, here's some ACIEE oroidin fun, courtesy of the Romo and Molinski groups (sea sponge in the background?):

Next, a sweet little palladacycle OM, thanks to the Gonzalez-Herrero and Vicente groups, in Spain (bright yellow, for Pd?):

Finally, submitted for your consideration, this chalcogen cluster assembly graphic from the Holm lab at Harvard, which recently graced JACS ('M' is tungsten, in case you missed it...):

Again, I'd like to point out that I'm not opposed to deft use of color, to draw the eye, differentiate, or point out an otherwise missed detail. But when the abstracts look more like abstract art? Too much.


Side Note: I couldn't resist showing one more, even though it's not from this past week. A 2011 KCN classic, nonetheless - behold, Epicoccin G (now in color!)

Coloring Chemistry - Useful, or Distracting?

Credit: JACS, Stepien group

While flipping through the JACS ASAP abstracts, I noticed this scheme from a group in Poland. My first thought, though, was not "Oh, cool, fused* porphyrins."

Nope. Instead, I thought "The coloring bug has spread!"

Credit: ACIEE, Nicolaou group

See, for a few years now, certain organic chemists have begun to "ink" their reaction schemes. At first, the rationalization was beauty, the notion that artistic flair livened up the work. Then, the noveau artistes spoke of functionality, indicating similarly sized groups, say, or drawing the reader's eye to certain molecular features (Note: go here or here for Derek's ITP take, or here for TotSyn's)

Lately, though, it's like a child has spilled his watercolor paints all over the abstract. Maybe these guys should team up on that new ACS coloring book.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of scientific visualizations that help illustrate a concept, like the winners of the 2011 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. And seminar slides with some red or blue structures never hurt anyone. But colored reaction schemes seem, to me, to be more about catching the eye (Wow, look over there!) than communicating good science.

Credit: JACS, Glorius group

Readers, what do you think? Am I just missing the point here? Or do you find the coloring-book approach equally vexing? 

I look forward to a spirited debate in the comments!

*(Bonus chemistry word of the day, for those playing at home: tetrabenzochrysenoporphyrin!)