The communication featured on this month's outside front cover (below) is provided by Phil Gale and co-workers at the University of Southampton, UK,  and  the University of Cagliari, Italy.  They describe the synthesis of a series of fluorescent carbazolylurea base anion receptors that show a high affinity for oxo-anions (particularly bicarbonate and acetate). 

In this month's Perspective article, also featured on the inside front cover (below), Matthew Brichacek and Jón T. Njardarson from Cornell University, US, comment on synthetic approaches that provide access to 2,5-dihydro- furan, thiophene and pyrrole building blocks. They also discuss their limitations and illustrate why a single method is insufficient. 

Kirstin Scherlach and Christian Hertweck from Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology, Germany, write about triggering cryptic natural product biosynthesis in microorganisms in the Emerging Area. Often valuable microbial products are overlooked because their biosynthetic pathways are only activated under specific conditions. This article gives an overview on the strategies to yield "cryptic natural products".