Communications Chemistry - Differential detection of tau aggregation species using a small molecule probe for cell-based drug screening

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 21 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02219-9Materials chemistry research at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) is often framed in terms of the constraints faced by faculty members, such as smaller research groups, limited instrumentation and heavier teaching loads. In this Perspective, the authors argue that PUI materials chemistry research can be better understood not as a diminished form of research university science, but as a distinct and productive research mode with its own logic and strengths.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 21 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02191-4Nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) has attracted attention as a potential low-cost, high-throughput route to stand-off screening of fentanyl. Here, the authors combine first-principles density functional theory, solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and NQR to probe quadrupolar interaction parameters for the aniline and piperidine 14N sites in different fentanyl forms, reporting key spectral fingerprints for rapid, non-contact detection in real-world screening scenarios.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 19 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02204-2Photo-crosslinking is a powerful technique for probing complex biological systems, yet developing high-affinity peptides that efficiently crosslink with target proteins often demands extensive optimisation. Here, the authors introduce a single-round mRNA-based protocol that efficiently converts hit peptides into high-affinity photo-crosslinking variants, facilitating streamlined development of peptide probes for tracking protein interactions, exemplified by PCSK9 internalization.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 19 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02208-yThe use of residual flotation reagents in mineral-processing wastewater poses environmental risks that require the development of heterogeneous catalysts for efficient wastewater treatment. Here, the authors prepare chestnut-shell-derived porous biochar (PCS800) and use it to fabricate a magnetic composite catalyst (CoFe2O4@5PCS800), demonstrating its performance in the degradation of butyl xanthate and its applicability in real water matrices.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 19 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02202-4Protonation can introduce an extra handle, besides light, in controlling the properties of photoswitches, opening the way to multi-stimuli responsive functional materials. Here, the authors report a pair of halochromic quinoline-based hydrazone photoswitches that show divergent photophysical properties based on the protonation site, yielding switches that can be activated using visible to near-infrared light.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 19 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-01968-xAlthough pure shift nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) effectively reduces spectral overlap caused by multiplet structure, existing pure shift methods lack the bandwidth to cover the large chemical shift ranges commonly observed in fluorine and phosphorus NMR. Here, the authors report an ultra-broadband, ultrahigh resolution NMR experiment for measuring pure shift spectra of nuclei, such as fluorine and phosphorus, and demonstrate its application to a perfluoroalkyl acid mixture and a mixture of tris-functionalised heptaphosphane cages.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 19 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02212-2Nucleoside triphosphates, cyclic monophosphates, and amino acids are thought to have coexisted in the prebiotic environment, yet their combined role in early biomolecular evolution remains unclear. Here, the authors demonstrate that the cross-catalytic oligomerization of nucleotides and amino acids under prebiotic conditions enhances peptide and oligonucleotide formation, suggesting a pathway for primordial aminoacylation and translation systems.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 18 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02181-6The conventional view of chemical pressure, which is defined as a structural distortion induced by chemical substitution, serves as an analogue to physical pressure, but its predictive power breaks down when the cation mixing behavior becomes non-ideal. Here, the authors use uranothorite (UxTh1-xSiO4), a zircon-structured solid solution series between coffinite (USiO4) and thorite (ThSiO4), to assess the limits of lattice strain-derived chemical pressure, showing that evaluating lattice distortions alone is inadequate for predicting phase behavior in systems with strongly non-ideal mixing energetics.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 18 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02215-zThe hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and the hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) exhibit an anomalous, non-Nernstian pH dependence that has motivated competing mechanistic narratives, however, a unified, transferable, and quantitatively predictive description across conditions remains underexplored. Here, the authors introduce a theory-neutral waveguide kinetics framework that reinterprets the polarization curve as a power-flow-like response, enabling a compact modal representation of interfacial kinetics, and show that the model quantitatively fits four representative polarization datasets traditionally explained by divergent theories.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 18 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02198-xSeveral multiple sequence alignment (MSA)-perturbing strategies have been shown to enhance AlphaFold2 (AF2) sampling of alternative protein states. In this work, the authors evaluate these strategies on AlphaFold3 (AF3), showing that the MSA-perturbing strategies enhance AF3 sampling of alternative states, and that different choices of amino acid masks can improve column-masked AF3 sampling for specific targets.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 17 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02182-5Sporadic alphavirus infections pose a pandemic threat and evade innate immunity through macrodomains that remove host mono-ADP-ribose (ADPr). Here, the authors use high-resolution crystallography of apo and ADPr-bound forms to reveal a conserved MacroD-like fold and a shared hydrogen-bonding network among macrodomains from Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV), Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV), and Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), providing insights into druggable features of alphaviral macrodomains and identifying a promising structural scaffold for the development of targeted broad-spectrum antiviral therapeutics.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 16 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02184-3While squaraine dyes are promising for light-based applications, their excited states beyond the visible spectrum remain underexplored. Here, the authors employ advanced spectroscopic techniques and theoretical methods to map the excited state landscape of N-isobutyl substituted anilino squaraine, revealing twelve distinct electronic states and enhancing our understanding of their optical properties.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02193-2The effective integration of large language models into drug design projects to generate biologically active drug-like molecules is a promising but challenging avenue of research. Here, the authors present a many-shot in-context learning approach using prompt engineering to guide LLMs, achieving significant potency improvements in drug design and demonstrating the potential of LLMs to accelerate hit-to-lead optimization.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02145-wUnderstanding the structure of molten actinide chlorides is essential for advancing modern molten salt reactors, but scattering experiments on these systems are challenging and Raman spectra are not straightforward to interpret. Here, the authors introduce a protocol that integrates Raman spectroscopy with first-principles simulations to unambiguously reveal the local structure of chloride melts containing actinides.

Job title: JR106892 Associate or Senior Editor, Communications Chemistry (Physical or Theoretical Chemistry) Locations: Shanghai, Beijing or Madrid (hybrid) Closing date: 27th September 2026 (candidat...

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 12 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02203-3The catalytic C–H acylation of heteroarenes is a key transformation in organic chemistry, although traditional methods often rely on unstable electrophiles and harsh conditions. Here, the authors present a mild palladium-catalyzed, copper-mediated strategy that employs stable thioester electrophiles and a weak base, enabling broad substrate tolerance along with mechanistic insights obtained via H/D exchange, kinetic analyses and in situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02201-5Monoterpene indole alkaloids (MIAs) are valuable natural products with sp3-rich terpenoid frameworks and nitrogen-containing alkaloid scaffolds, but their structural diversity is largely shaped by canonical strictosidine-based biosynthesis from tryptamine and secologanin. Here, the authors report a diversity-enhanced extract strategy that transforms plant-derived iridoid pools with a series of indole alkylamines to generate structurally diverse, non-natural MIA-like scaffolds and expand the accessible chemical space surrounding natural MIAs.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02185-2Incorporating nitrogen into π-conjugated hydrocarbons provides a powerful way to tune molecular geometry, electronic and light-emission properties. Here, the authors report two modular synthetic strategies for precisely positioning nitrogen atoms in double aza-helicenes and diazabenzo-fused terrylenes.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02192-3Understanding how microenvironments generated by liquid-liquid phase separation affect the photophysics of fluorescent proteins is a prerequisite to probing their internal physical chemistry beyond fluorophore concentration effects. Here, the authors use time-resolved fluorescence microscopy on mNeonGreen-tagged DDX4 to show that fluorescence lifetime and anisotropy respond sensitively to phase separation and biochemical perturbations, including the addition of Ca2+ or ATP.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02196-zDifferential detection of tau aggregation species using a small molecule probe for cell-based drug screening

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 09 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02195-0Reprocessing used nuclear fuel (UNF) can recover valuable components, including radioisotopes for medicine and energy applications. Here, the authors introduce an actinide separation method using low-temperature fluorination, selective dissolution, and antisolvent-recrystallization achieving 91% removal of fission-product generated activity from UNF in a single pass.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02180-7Mass spectrometry plays a crucial role in drug development, yet traditional methods struggle with covalent drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Here, the authors demonstrate that direct measurement of drug–protein conjugates offers a more effective approach, with imaging providing spatially resolved insight that enhances the understanding of covalent drug behavior.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02176-3Accurate prediction of molecular antimicrobial activity remains a key challenge in the pursuit of novel antibiotic candidates. Here, the authors introduce CapMolPred, a deep learning model integrating chemistry language models and a capsule network, demonstrating superior prediction of inhibitory potency against key bacteria and highlighting the potential of AI in accelerating antibiotic discovery.