Direct link to article in Nature Chemistry: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-026-02091-z

Abstract

Sulfur–sulfur bonds are ubiquitous across broad classes of natural products, peptides and proteins, drug molecules, and synthetic polymers and materials. The ability to make and break these bonds in a controlled manner is critical for their many scientific and technological applications. Here we report the discovery of an unusual S–S metathesis reaction of organic trisulfides. When exposed to certain polar aprotic solvents, trisulfides were found to undergo spontaneous metathesis, with the reaction equilibrium established in seconds in some cases. No exogenous reagents, heat, light or other stimuli were required to provoke this reaction. Furthermore, the trisulfide metathesis process can occur both inter- and intramolecularly. Understanding the scope and mechanism of this reaction enabled diverse applications of this chemistry in dynamic combinatorial library synthesis, the covalent modification of complex natural products, and S–S metathesis polymerization and depolymerization as a platform for chemically recyclable plastics.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago*

    There's a car-free neighborhood in my city and it's been there for at least 25 years. It was not originally designed as such; they simply made a huge section of downtown pedestrian only by putting blockers on the street.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Wouldn't that kind of be part of the point? If walkable communities can work in Arizona of all places, there's no excuse (short of "I literally can't open my front door due to all the snow on the other side of it") for the rest of the country.

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