We report a previously unrecognized mechanism for the prolonged action of biocidal agents, which we denote as the zombies effect: biocidally-killed bacteria are capable of killing living bacteria. The concept is demonstrated by first killing Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 with silver nitrate and then challenging, with the dead bacteria, a viable culture of the same bacterium: Efficient antibacterial activity of the killed bacteria is observed. A mechanism is suggested in terms of the action of the dead bacteria as a reservoir of silver, which, due to Le-Chatelier's principle, is re-targeted to the living bacteria. Langmuirian behavior, as well as deviations from it, support the proposed mechanism.

The definition of the continuous chirality measure (CCM) is provided and its applications are summarized in this tutorial review, with special emphasis on the field of transition metal complexes. The CCM approach, developed in recent years, provides a quantitative parameter that evaluates the degree of chirality of a given molecule. Many quantitative structural correlations with chirality have been identified for most of the important families of metal complexes. Our recent research has shown that one can associate the chirality measures with, e.g., enantioselectivity in asymmetric catalysis. We also explore a fragment approach to chirality in which we investigate which part of a molecule is responsible for the chirality-associated properties of a given family of compounds.

Chiral zeolites are porous materials of prime importance because of their enantioselective potential applications in catalysis, in separation-science and in chromatography. We report a surprising observation made: as many as many 20 chiral silicate zeolites, none of which were recognized as such in their original publication, exist. In other words, the “holy grail” of having a library of such silicates was right under our nose. To be of practical use, such zeolites must reveal molecular level enantioselectivity; we show, for the first time, that chiral silicate zeolites are capable of enantioselective recognition of enantiomers, as revealed from comparative adsorption calorimetry experiments with either D- or L-histidine. The question of how to assign handedness to a chiral zeolite is addressed.

A common perception of many chemists is that non-biological chiral crystals comprise a small fraction of all crystals, as is the case of chiral non-biological molecules (∼10%). We show that the proportion of non-biological chiral crystals is as high as 23%; and only ∼6% of these are labelled as chiral.