Mark McLaughlin

1 Introduction The birth of offspring is a fundamental aspect of animal biology, differing in its evolutionary history across the animal kingdom but convergent in function (Van Dyke et al. 2014; Whittington et al. 2025). Viviparous pregnancy is the full development of one or more offspring wholly within the maternal reproductive tract, the physiological process which defines viviparity.

1 Introduction 7-Methyl guanosine (m7G) capping of short-chain oligo- and poly-nucleotides is one of the key events in helping long-chain polyadenylated polynucleotide transcripts form from linear DNA coding templates, through the action of RNA polymerases, both in vivo and in vitro [1-8].

Calcium Catalysed Strecker-Type Reactions Towards α-Aminonitriles We report an operationally simple calcium catalysed Strecker type reaction for the synthesis of a-aminonitriles from readily available N,O-acetals. The reaction is tolerant to a wide range of useful functional groups, including heterocycles, and provides the product in good to excellent yields.