{"id":229637,"date":"2026-01-23T01:26:22","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T07:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/molecular-surgery-deleting-a-single-atom-from-a-molecule"},"modified":"2026-01-23T01:26:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T07:26:22","slug":"molecular-surgery-deleting-a-single-atom-from-a-molecule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/molecular-surgery-deleting-a-single-atom-from-a-molecule","title":{"rendered":"Molecular surgery: \u2018Deleting\u2019 a single atom from a molecule"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/molecular-surgery-deleting-a-single-atom-from-a-molecule.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Inserting, removing or swapping individual atoms from the core of a molecule is a long-standing challenge in chemistry. This process, called skeletal editing, can dramatically speed up drug discovery or be applied for upcycling of plastics. Consequently, the field is witnessing a surge of interest spanning from fundamental chemical research to applications in the pharmaceutical industry.<\/p>\n<p>A group of researchers have now extended the scope of skeletal editing to the scale of just a single molecule. Such a level of precision in skeletal editing is unprecedented, and this may open a new route to obtain elusive molecules.<\/p>\n<p>The team of researchers are active at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden; IBM Research Europe\u2014Zurich, Switzerland; and CiQUS at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. In a recent article <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/10.1021\/jacs.5c16196\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the <i>Journal of the American Chemical Society<\/i>, they demonstrate how, in a controlled manner, they can selectively remove a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2022-07-chemists-bonds-atoms-molecule.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">single oxygen atom<\/a> from an organic molecule using the sharp tip of a scanning probe microscope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inserting, removing or swapping individual atoms from the core of a molecule is a long-standing challenge in chemistry. This process, called skeletal editing, can dramatically speed up drug discovery or be applied for upcycling of plastics. Consequently, the field is witnessing a surge of interest spanning from fundamental chemical research to applications in the pharmaceutical [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}