Organic Chemistry News

May 21, 2024

Top Headlines

Seeking Stronger Steel, Systematic Look at 120 Combinations of Alloy Elements Provides Clues

May 20, 2024 — Investigating ways to create high-performance steel, a research team used theoretical calculations on 120 combinations of 12 alloy elements, such as aluminum and titanium, with carbon and nitrogen, ...

Blueprints of Self-Assembly

May 20, 2024 — Scientists have taken a step closer to replicating nature's processes of self-assembly. The study describes the synthetic construction of a tiny, self-assembled crystal known as a 'pyrochlore,' which bears unique optical properties. The advance ...

Breaking Bonds to Form Bonds: Rethinking the Chemistry of Cations

May 16, 2024 — A team of chemists has achieved a significant breakthrough in the field of chemical synthesis, developing a novel method for manipulating carbon-hydrogen bonds. This groundbreaking discovery provides new insights into the molecular interactions of ...

How to Make Ubiquitous Plastics Biodegradable

May 14, 2024 — Polystyrene is made from styrene building blocks and is the most widely used plastic in terms of volume, for example in packaging. Unlike PET, which can now be produced and recycled using biotechnological methods, the production of polystyrene has ...

Latest Headlines

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Diamond Glitter: A Play of Colors With Artificial DNA Crystals

May 17, 2024 — Using DNA origami, researchers have built a diamond lattice with a periodicity of hundreds of nanometers -- a new approach for manufacturing semiconductors for visible ...

Bioengineered Enzyme Creates Natural Vanillin from Plants in One Step

May 16, 2024 — Vanilla, the most widely used flavoring compound in confectionaries and cosmetics, gets its sweet flavor and aroma from the chemical compound -- 'vanillin'. However, the large-scale production of ...

Next-Generation Sustainable Electronics Are Doped With Air

May 15, 2024 — Semiconductors are the foundation of all modern electronics. Now, researchers have developed a new method where organic semiconductors can become more conductive with the help of air as a dopant. The ...

Promising New Development in Solar Cell Technology

May 15, 2024 — Researchers who contributed to the development of record-breaking solar cells a few years ago, expanded their invention. The self-assembled monolayers can now be applied not only in inverted but also ...

Eco-Friendly and Affordable Battery for Low-Income Countries

May 14, 2024 — A battery made from zinc and lignin that can be used over 8000 times. This has been developed with a vision to provide a cheap and sustainable battery solution for countries where access to ...

Getting Dirty to Clean Up the Chemical Industry's Environmental Impact

May 9, 2024 — The global chemical industry is a major fossil fuel consumer and climate change contributor; however, new research has identified how the sector could clean up its green credentials by getting ...

New 'Forever Chemical' Cleanup Strategy Discovered

May 9, 2024 — A method has been discovered to treat water heavily contaminated with unhealthful forever chemicals, known by chemists as PFAS or poly- and per-fluoroalkyl substances. It involves treating heavily ...

2D All-Organic Perovskites: Potential Use in 2D Electronics

May 9, 2024 — Perovskites are among the most researched topics in materials science. Recently, a research team has solved an age-old challenge to synthesize all-organic two-dimensional perovskites, extending the ...

An Epigenome Editing Toolkit to Dissect the Mechanisms of Gene Regulation

May 9, 2024 — A recent study led to the development of a powerful epigenetic editing technology. The system unlocks the ability to precisely program chromatin modifications at any specific position in the genome, ...

Chemists Produce New-to-Nature Enzyme Containing Boron

May 8, 2024 — Chemists created an enzyme with boronic acid at its reactive center. This approach can produce more selective reactions with boron, and allows the use of directed evolution to improve its catalytic ...

Why Is Breaking Down Plant Material for Biofuels So Slow?

May 7, 2024 — Tracking individual enzymes during the breakdown of cellulose for biofuel production has revealed how several roadblocks slow this process when using plant material that might otherwise go to waste. ...

'Better Than Graphene' Material Development May Improve Implantable Technology

May 7, 2024 — Move over, graphene. There's a new, improved two-dimensional material in the lab. Borophene, the atomically thin version of boron first synthesized in 2015, is more conductive, thinner, lighter, ...

Caterbot? Robatapillar? It Crawls With Ease Through Loops and Bends

May 6, 2024 — Engineers created a catapillar-shaped robot that splits into segments and reassembles, hauls cargo, and crawls through twisting ...

High-Pressure Spectroscopy: Why 3,000 Bars Are Needed to Take a Comprehensive Look at a Protein

May 6, 2024 — Why 3,000 bars are needed to take a comprehensive look at a protein: Researchers present a new high-pressure spectroscopy method to unravel the properties of proteins' native ...

New Approach in the Synthesis of Complex Natural Substances

May 2, 2024 — Many natural substances possess interesting characteristics, and can form the basis of new active compounds in medicine. Terpenes, for example, are a group of substances, some of which are already ...

Researchers Create New Chemical Compound to Solve 120-Year-Old Problem

May 2, 2024 — Chemists have created a highly reactive chemical compound that has eluded scientists for more than 120 years. The discovery could lead to new drug treatments, safer agricultural products, and better ...

Scientists Solve Chemical Mystery at the Interface of Biology and Technology

Apr. 30, 2024 — Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) allow current to flow in devices like implantable biosensors. But scientists long knew about a quirk of OECTs that no one could explain: When an OECT is ...

Research on RNA Editing Illuminates Possible Lifesaving Treatments for Genetic Diseases

Apr. 29, 2024 — The research explores how CRISPR can be used to edit ...

When Does a Conductor Not Conduct?

Apr. 29, 2024 — A new study uncovers a switchable, atomically-thin metal-organic material that could be used in future low-energy electronic technologies. The study shows that electron interactions in this material ...

Getting Dynamic Information from Static Snapshots

Apr. 26, 2024 — Researchers have created TopicVelo, a powerful new method of using the static snapshots from scRNA-seq to study how cells and genes change over time. This will help researchers better study how ...

A Shortcut for Drug Discovery

Apr. 25, 2024 — For most human proteins, there are no small molecules known to bind them chemically (so called 'ligands'). Ligands frequently represent important starting points for drug development but ...

Nanomaterial That Mimics Proteins Could Be Basis for New Neurodegenerative Disease Treatments

Apr. 25, 2024 — A newly developed nanomaterial that mimics the behavior of proteins could be an effective tool for treating Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. The nanomaterial alters the ...

The Longer Spilled Oil Lingers in Freshwater, the More Persistent Compounds It Produces

Apr. 25, 2024 — Oil is an important natural resource for many industries, but it can lead to serious environmental damage when accidentally spilled. While large oil spills are highly publicized, every year there are ...

The Secret to Saving Old Books Could Be Gluten-Free Glues

Apr. 25, 2024 — 'Bookworm' is a cute thing to call a voracious reader, but actual bookworms -- as well as microorganisms and time -- break down the flour pastes commonly used to keep old publications in ...

Biophysics: Testing How Well Biomarkers Work

Apr. 24, 2024 — Researchers have developed a method to determine how reliably target proteins can be labeled using super-resolution fluorescence ...

A Chemical Mystery Solved -- The Reaction Explaining Large Carbon Sinks

Apr. 24, 2024 — A mystery that has puzzled the scientific community for over 50 years has finally been solved. A team has discovered that a certain type of chemical reaction can explain why organic matter found in ...

Researchers Create Artificial Cells That Act Like Living Cells

Apr. 23, 2024 — Researchers describe the steps they took to manipulate DNA and proteins -- essential building blocks of life -- to create cells that look and act like cells from the body. This accomplishment, a ...

New Copper-Catalyzed C-H Activation Strategy

Apr. 20, 2024 — Inspired by what human liver enzymes can do, chemists have developed a new set of copper-catalyzed organic synthesis reactions for building and modifying pharmaceuticals and other molecules. The new ...

Light Show in Living Cells

Apr. 19, 2024 — Observing proteins precisely within cells is extremely important for many branches of research but has been a significant technical challenge -- especially in living cells, as the required ...

From Defects to Order: Spontaneously Emerging Crystal Arrangements in Perovskite Halides

Apr. 17, 2024 — A new hybrid layered perovskite featuring elusive spontaneous defect ordering has been found, report scientists. By introducing specific concentrations of thiocyanate ions into FAPbI3 (FA = ...