The kick-off meeting for the National Program on Key Research and Development Project “Development of New Methods for Comprehensive Analysis of Protein Complexes with dynamic changes” was held in DICP on October 28th-29th. The meeting was chaired by Yukui Zhang (Member of Chinese Academy of Science, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics). There were ten experts, including Erkang Wang (Member of Chinese Academy of Science, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry academician), Qiankun Zhuang (The National Natural Science Foundation of Department of Chemistry), and more than 50 project participants attended the conference. The chief scientist, professor Mingliang Ye, firstly introduced the project and other professors also introduced the sub-project and their plans. The experts discussed the project and put forward many constructive suggestions.
　　 
　　Proteins are the fundamentals in biological life, and protein-protein interactions (PPIs) play important roles during many biological functions. Thus, comprehensive analysis of protein complexes could help us to understand the PPIs. The project “Development of New Methods for Comprehensive Analysis of Protein Complexes with dynamic changes” is mainly focused on the characterizations of protein complexes at largescale, which could be in favor with the PPI analysis. The project will be performed on two dimensions: one dimension is development of new methods for identification of protein complexes and PTM dependent interaction sites, which analyze functional protein complexes with space-time dynamic changes; another dimension is the analysis of protein complexes during whole cell signal-transduction pathway by using the developed methods, which includes the processes from cell membranes to cell nuclear. Thus above, comprehensive analysis of protein complexes could be completed by using the newly developed methods, which has great potential applications in the study of mechanisms of tumor progress and drug-resistance.
　　

　　The kick-off meeting for the National Program on Key Research and Development Project “Development of New Methods for Comprehensive Analysis of Protein Complexes with dynamic changes” was held in DICP on October 28th-29th. The meeting was chaired by Yukui Zhang (Member of Chinese Academy of Science, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics). There were ten experts, including Erkang Wang (Member of Chinese Academy of Science, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry academician), Qiankun Zhuang (The National Natural Science Foundation of Department of Chemistry), and more than 50 project participants attended the conference. The chief scientist, professor Mingliang Ye, firstly introduced the project and other professors also introduced the sub-project and their plans. The experts discussed the project and put forward many constructive suggestions.
　　 
　　Proteins are the fundamentals in biological life, and protein-protein interactions (PPIs) play important roles during many biological functions. Thus, comprehensive analysis of protein complexes could help us to understand the PPIs. The project “Development of New Methods for Comprehensive Analysis of Protein Complexes with dynamic changes” is mainly focused on the characterizations of protein complexes at largescale, which could be in favor with the PPI analysis. The project will be performed on two dimensions: one dimension is development of new methods for identification of protein complexes and PTM dependent interaction sites, which analyze functional protein complexes with space-time dynamic changes; another dimension is the analysis of protein complexes during whole cell signal-transduction pathway by using the developed methods, which includes the processes from cell membranes to cell nuclear. Thus above, comprehensive analysis of protein complexes could be completed by using the newly developed methods, which has great potential applications in the study of mechanisms of tumor progress and drug-resistance.
　　

　　Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is a key step in H2-O2 fuel cell, which is however facings slow kinetics. Platinum is acknowledged to be the best catalyst for the ORR, however, their scarcity and high cost remain one of the greatest obstacles to the large-scale commercialization of H2-O2 Fuel Cell. To address this issue, enormous efforts have been devoted to developing novel catalytic materials, like low platinum alloys or core-shell structured platinum catalysts and non-platinum heteroatom-doped carbon catalysts. However, the overpotential of ORR needs to be reduced at least ca. 0.2 V even for the state-of-the-art catalyst.
　　Prof. LI Can and his team at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) developed a new strategy, by taking the advantage of photocatalysis, to accelerate the ORR. By coupling the photocatalysis, the kinetics of the ORR is significantly accelerated with a polymer semiconductor catalyst (e.g., polyterthiophene). The onset potential shows a positive shift from 0.66 to 1.34 V, and the current is enhanced by 44 times at 0.6 V. The improvement is further demonstrated with a proof-of-concept light-driven H2-O2 fuel cell, in which the open circuit voltage increases from 0.64 to 1.18 V and the short circuit current is doubled. The increased in the potential, conferred by illumination, is respectively to be 0.68 and 0.54 V for the half-cell and fuel cell, and such an increase is close to the photovoltage of polymer solar cells, which were reported to be in the range of 0.6-0.8 V. It is, therefore, concluded that this novel light-driven fuel cell is the tandem structure of polymer solar cell and fuel cell, which enables the utilization of both photo- and electrochemical energy simultaneously, showing a promise in energy conversion and storage.
　　Figure. Photo-assisted oxygen reduction reaction (left) and the work principle of the tandem cell (right)(Imaged by ZHANG Bingqing)
　　This work ware recently published in the Angewandt Chemie International Edition (DOI:10.1002/anie.201607118). This work was financially supported by 973 National Basic Research Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology (Grant 2014CB239400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 1090340) and iChEM. (Text and Imaged by ZHANG Bingqing).
　　Dr. LU Xinyi
　　Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
　　457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian, 116023, China,
　　Tel: 86-411-84379201,
　　E-mail: luxinyi@dicp.ac.cn 

　　Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is a key step in H2-O2 fuel cell, which is however facings slow kinetics. Platinum is acknowledged to be the best catalyst for the ORR, however, their scarcity and high cost remain one of the greatest obstacles to the large-scale commercialization of H2-O2 Fuel Cell. To address this issue, enormous efforts have been devoted to developing novel catalytic materials, like low platinum alloys or core-shell structured platinum catalysts and non-platinum heteroatom-doped carbon catalysts. However, the overpotential of ORR needs to be reduced at least ca. 0.2 V even for the state-of-the-art catalyst.
　　Prof. LI Can and his team at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) developed a new strategy, by taking the advantage of photocatalysis, to accelerate the ORR. By coupling the photocatalysis, the kinetics of the ORR is significantly accelerated with a polymer semiconductor catalyst (e.g., polyterthiophene). The onset potential shows a positive shift from 0.66 to 1.34 V, and the current is enhanced by 44 times at 0.6 V. The improvement is further demonstrated with a proof-of-concept light-driven H2-O2 fuel cell, in which the open circuit voltage increases from 0.64 to 1.18 V and the short circuit current is doubled. The increased in the potential, conferred by illumination, is respectively to be 0.68 and 0.54 V for the half-cell and fuel cell, and such an increase is close to the photovoltage of polymer solar cells, which were reported to be in the range of 0.6-0.8 V. It is, therefore, concluded that this novel light-driven fuel cell is the tandem structure of polymer solar cell and fuel cell, which enables the utilization of both photo- and electrochemical energy simultaneously, showing a promise in energy conversion and storage.
　　Figure. Photo-assisted oxygen reduction reaction (left) and the work principle of the tandem cell (right)(Imaged by ZHANG Bingqing)
　　This work ware recently published in the Angewandt Chemie International Edition (DOI:10.1002/anie.201607118). This work was financially supported by 973 National Basic Research Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology (Grant 2014CB239400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 1090340) and iChEM. (Text and Imaged by ZHANG Bingqing).
　　Dr. LU Xinyi
　　Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
　　457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian, 116023, China,
　　Tel: 86-411-84379201,
　　E-mail: luxinyi@dicp.ac.cn 

　　A review on catalytic C?alkylation of ketones and related compounds by alcohols through borrowing hydrogen strategy was recently published in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. (2016, 55, 862-875) by Prof. Zhengkun Yu, et al. from the Laboratories of Organometallic Catalysis and Synthesis, Chinese Academy of Sciences (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201507521/full).
　　Highlight on C?Alkylation of Ketones and Related Compounds by Alcohols Through Borrowing Hydrogen Strategy(Photo by Ping WU)
　　Transition metal-catalyzed C-alkylation of ketones and secondary alcohols with alcohols avoids use of organometallic or environmentally unbenign alkylating agents by means of borrowing hydrogen (BH) activation of the alcohol substrates. Water is formed as the only by-product, which makes the BH process atom-economical and environmentally benign. Diverse homogeneous and heterogeneous transition metal catalysts, ketones, and alcohols can be used for such a purpose, rendering a BH process to be promising for replacing the traditional procedures using alkylating agents in organic synthesis. This minireview summarizes the advances during the last five years in transition metal-catalyzed BH ?-alkylation of ketones, and ?-alkylation of secondary alcohols with alcohols. Discussion on the application of the BH strategy for C-C bond formation is given. (Text/Photo by Ping WU)
　　

　　The 2015 annual meeting for the Academic Committee of the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics (SKLMRD) was held at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) on January 19-21, 2016, which is also the first Members' Meeting of the Sixth Academic Committee. About 80 people attended the meeting, including the advisory board (Academician Guozhong He, Academician Guohe Sha, Academician Jiannian Yao, Academician Xi Zhang), the committee (Academician Lansun Zheng, Academician Buxing Han, Academician Yadong Li, Academician Kopin Liu, Academician He Tian, Academician Yundong Wu, Academician Xueming Yang, Academician Jincai Zhao, Professor Zhiyi Wei, Professor Andong Xia, Professor Xin Xu, Professor John Z. H. Zhang, Professor Mingfei Zhou), and the research scientists from the SKLMRD. Academician Tao Zhang, the director of DICP, presented in this meeting and encouraged the committee to ontribute creative thinking and operational excellence to the SKLMRD.
　　Academician Lansun Zheng, the director of the Academic Committee, presided over the meeting. Professor Donghui Zhang, the director of the SKLMRD, first reported team building, talent honors, graduate training, the task, open funding, existing problems of the SKLMD in the last year, and pointed out the priory work for the future, etc. In addition, Donghui Zhang generally introduced the basic situation of the Chemical Dynamics Research Center (class B group) which was established at the end of 2015. Each group leader individually reported their research directions, the personnel, research achievements, and future research plan. Academician Xueming Yang, the director of Chemical Dynamics Research Center and Professor Weiqing Zhang, Associate Professor Kaijun Yuan gave reports of “Surface photochemistry reaction dynamics”, “Progress of the project of extremely ultraviolet coherent light source”, “Low temperature dynamics of alcohol-water structures and ionic aqueous solution with 2D-IR spectroscopy” respectively.
　　2015 Annual Meeting for the Academic Committee of the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics(Photo by XU Dali)
　　The members of this academic committee are the top experts from different fields of chemistry and physics. During the discussion, the academic committee highly praised the accomplishments of the SKLMRD in 2015, and deeply discussed the organization of the lab, the integration and organization of the Chemical Dynamics Research Center, the internal evaluation mechanism of the SKLMRD based on the new situation, including outstanding young talent training, interdisciplinary and communication, and the specific scientific questions exist in these group leaders’ report. (Text/Photo by Shuling Chen and Dongxu Dai)