A silver rush in organic chemistry.

Incorporation of a nitrogen atom into an organic molecule is crucial for synthesizing chemicals used across pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and polymer industries (1). Amines—organic compounds that contain carbon-nitrogen (C–N) bonds—are often formed by using expensive functionalized starting materials (substrates). Directly replacing a specific carbonhydrogen (C–H) bond in a substrate with a nitrogen-containing substituent (2) can reduce waste by-products and the number of synthesis steps (3). However, cleaving a desired C–H bond is difficult because the reactivities of different C–H bonds within a molecule do not vary substantially (4). On page 421 of this issue, Trinh et al. (5) report a strategy to insert a nitrogen atom into a specific C–H bond by using silver(I) complexes as a catalyst. This approach can generate a wide variety of nitrogen-containing chemicals at a cost that is lower than using conventional rhodium metal complexes (6). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]