The front cover was supplied by Eric Kantchev and colleagues at Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore. The team report the design and development of a well-defined, stable NHC-palladacyclic complex as a practical, highly active, versatile and user-friendly Heck-Mizoroki catalyst. 

The inside front cover, by Hitoshi Tamiaki and colleagues at Ritsumeikan University, Kusatsu, Japan, depicts their studies towards the isolation and characterisation of chlorophylls-c and the elucidation of the function of their rigid acrylate moiety.

The formation of carbon-halogen bonds in an enantioselective manner is an important reaction, because it leads to optically active halogen compounds, which are useful intermediates for further elaboration to other valuable compounds. In their Emerging Area, Keiji Maruoka and colleagues from Kyoto University, Japan, describe recent developments in asymmetric organocatalysed halogenations. 

Multivalency often improves the potency of carbohydrate ligands and inhibitors. In his perspective, Roland Pieters, at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, discusses how different target proteins need different multivalent ligand designs to maximise the multivalency effects. 

Shu-Ming Li and colleagues from the Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany, report a highly selective one-step synthesis of natural products in their Hot Article. The approach uses enzymes to convert polycyclic precursors into aszonalenins. 

In this issue's second Hot Article, Rahman Mizanur and Nicola Pohl, from Iowa State University, Ames, US, identify a bifunctional phosphomannose isomerase/guanidinediphosphate-mannose pyrophosphorylase enzyme from the hyperthermophile Pyrococcus furiosus and its utility in the syntheses of a number of activated mannoses and guanidinediphosphate sugars.