Physical non-equilibria can drive cycles of replication and selection chemistries that play a role in the prebiotic replication of DNA and RNA. This Perspective offers insights from astrophysics, geoscience and microfluidics on how various environments on early Earth could have hosted such reactions.
Messenger RNAs (mRNAs) contain chemical marks that are critical for antiviral defense in cells, according to a new study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine. The finding solves a 50-year mystery concerning the purpose of these chemical modifications, and suggests that faulty mRNA modification may underlie some autoimmune and inflammatory disorders.
Pharmaceutical synthesis is often quite complex; simplifications are needed to speed up the initial phase of drug development and lower the cost of generic production. Now, in a study recently published in Science, researchers from Osaka University have discovered a chemical reaction that could transform drug production because of its simplicity and utility.
Pharmaceuticals generally contain a few tens of atoms and a similar number of chemical bonds between the atoms. Thus, designing complex drug architectures from simple precursors using the techniques of organic chemistry usually requires careful planning and tedious, incremental steps.
The gold standard in drug synthesis is to create, in one step, as many chemical bonds as possible. In principle, adding one carbon atom—by forming four bonds in one step—to a drug precursor can be a means of doing so. Unfortunately, atomic carbon is generally too unstable for use in common chemical reaction conditions. This is the problem that the researchers sought to address.
Evolution’s rapid pace after the Cambrian explosion
Though the work of Schopf and other paleobiologists continues to fill in the Precambrian fossil record, questions remain about the pace of the Cambrian explosion. What triggered life to evolve so fast?
The question has intrigued scientists of many disciplines for decades. Interdisciplinary collaboration has wrought a wealth of evidence from diverse perspectives — geochemical, paleoenvironmental, geological, anatomical, and taxonomic — that describes how biological organisms evolved in concert with changing environmental conditions.
The study was undertaken by Yasuhiro Oba’s team from Hokkaido University in Japan and astrochemists at NASA. A few years ago, Oba developed a technique to delicately excavate and separate different chemical compounds found in meteorite dust.
Using their mild extraction technique that uses cold water instead of acids, scientists found life-creating bases and compounds in four meteorite samples from Australia, US state of Kentucky, and Canadian province of British Columbia.
The discovery of these compounds in meteorites means that it is possible life on Earth as it stands today was created by compounds that came from outer space.
In the year 1,808, French chemists Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thenard, and independently, English chemist Humphry Davy, discovered the fifth element of the periodic table—boron. In crystalline form, boron primarily possesses three polymorphs, i.e., three distinct unit cell configurations: α-rhombohedral, β-rhombohedral, and β-tetragonal, among 16 possible bulk allotropes.
The unique properties of this element have resulted in its use in numerous applications, including chemistry, materials science, life sciences, energy research and electronics. Moreover, based on studies conducted over the past decade, boron has significant potential for use in pharmaceutical drug design as it plays an essential role in bone growth and maintenance, wound healing, prevention of vitamin-D deficiency and other processes.
In the periodic table of elements, boron lies to the left of carbon, which causes boron to have similar valence orbitals but a shorter covalent radius. In contrast to carbon, which favors a 2D (two-dimensional) layered structure (aka graphite) in its bulk form, the bulk allotropes of boron are composed of B12 icosahedral cages. As a result, it was challenging to experimentally realize a 2D atomic network of boron, also known as borophene, until 2015.
An international team of researchers has developed a technique that uses liquid metal to create an elastic material that is impervious to both gases and liquids. Applications for the material include use as packaging for high-value technologies that require protection from gases, such as flexible batteries.
“This is an important step because there has long been a trade-off between elasticity and being impervious to gases,” says Michael Dickey, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University.
“Basically, things that were good at keeping gases out tended to be hard and stiff. And things that offered elasticity allowed gases to seep through. We’ve come up with something that offers the desired elasticity while keeping gases out.”
My recently published perspective paper has been featured by GEN Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News!
#biotechnology #genetherapy #syntheticbiology
Synthetic biology has the potential to upend existing paradigms of adeno-associated virus (AAV) production, helping to reduce the high costs of gene therapy and thus make it more accessible, according to a recent paper.
AAVs are an important vector for gene therapy, but AAV manufacturing is complex and expensive. Furthermore, first author Logan Thrasher Collins, a PhD candidate at Washington University in Saint Louis, tells GEN. “Many current industry approaches to enhancing AAV yields involve incremental process optimization. Synthetic biology has the potential to offer more radical improvements, yet is relatively underappreciated in the context of AAV production.”
If she hits just the right pitch, a singer can shatter a wine glass. The reason is resonance. While the glass may vibrate slightly in response to most acoustic tones, a pitch that resonates with the material’s own natural frequency can send its vibrations into overdrive, causing the glass to shatter.
Resonance also occurs at the much smaller scale of atoms and molecules. When particles chemically react, it’s partly due to specific conditions that resonate with particles in a way that drives them to chemically link. But atoms and molecules are constantly in motion, inhabiting a blur of vibrating and rotating states. Picking out the exact resonating state that ultimately triggers molecules to react has been nearly impossible.
MIT physicists may have cracked part of this mystery with a new study appearing in the journal Nature. The team reports that they have for the first time observed a resonance in colliding ultracold molecules.
There are many ways to generate electricity—batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, and hydroelectric dams, to name a few examples… and now, there’s rust.
New research conducted by scientists at Caltech and Northwestern University shows that thin films of rust—iron oxide—can generate electricity when saltwater flows over them. These films represent an entirely new way of generating electricity and could be used to develop new forms of sustainable power production.
Interactions between metal compounds and saltwater often generate electricity, but this is usually the result of a chemical reaction in which one or more compounds are converted to new compounds. Reactions like these are what is at work inside batteries.