Feature Channels: Chemistry

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In the ultimate betrayal, one’s own immune system can turn against the protective sheath that envelops neurons in the brain, leaving the body paralyzed. Researchers have developed an experimental treatment that tames the wayward immune system in rodents, returning the power of movement to paralyzed mice. The approach may someday combat autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes, in humans.

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On the list of dreaded medical tests, a prostate biopsy probably ranks fairly high. The common procedure requires sticking a needle into the prostate gland to remove tissue for assessment. Thousands of men who undergo the uncomfortable procedure, prompted by a positive PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test, ultimately don’t require cancer treatment.

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Spraying cyanide near coral reefs teeming with tropical creatures can quickly and cheaply stun ornamental fish that can then be scooped up and sold around the world. The practice supplies pet stores but often leaves behind damaged coral and dead fish exposed to too much of the toxin.

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In a perfect world, people would diligently reapply sunscreen every couple of hours to protect their delicate skin from damaging solar radiation. But in reality, few people actually adhere to reapplication guidelines, and those who do hardly relish the task. To develop longer-lasting sunscreens, researchers are trying to answer a basic question: How do sunblock ingredients work?

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Pollution created by making and dyeing clothes has pitted the fashion industry and environmentalists against each other. Now, the advent of “fast fashion” — trendy clothing affordable enough to be disposable — has strained that relationship even more. But what if we could recycle clothes like we recycle paper, or even upcycle them? Scientists report today new progress toward that goal.

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Powerful nuisance odors from sewage and wastewater treatment facilities are a worldwide problem, but finding and eliminating the sources of such unpleasant aromas can be difficult.

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Most medicines can’t get through the blood-brain barrier (BBB), a highly selective membrane that separates the circulatory system from the fluid bathing the brain. Certain peptides in animal venoms, however, can navigate across it to inflict damage. Now, researchers are capitalizing on venomous sneak attacks by developing a strategy based on a bee-venom peptide, apamin, to deliver medications to the brain.

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Antibiotics save lives every day, but there is a downside to their ubiquity. High doses can kill healthy cells along with infection-causing bacteria, while also spurring the creation of “superbugs” that no longer respond to known antibiotics. Now, researchers may have found a natural way to cut down on antibiotic use without sacrificing health: a maple syrup extract that dramatically increases the potency of these medicines.

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Exposure during infancy to the common plasticizer bisphenol A (BPA) “hijacks” and reprograms genes in the liver of newborn rats, leading to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in adulthood. A new study has found how this process occurs, and researchers will present the results Saturday at ENDO 2017, the Endocrine Society’s 99th annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.

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Some flame retardants used in many home products appear to be associated with the most common type of thyroid cancer, papillary thyroid cancer (PTC), according to a new study being presented Saturday at the Endocrine Society’s 99th annual meeting, ENDO 2017, in Orlando, Fla.

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Environmental exposure to common pesticides may cause boys to reach sexual maturity earlier, researchers have found. They will present their study results Saturday at the Endocrine Society’s 99th annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.

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Producing and distributing hydrogen peroxide is a challenge in many parts of the world. Now scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have created a small device for hydrogen peroxide production that could be powered by renewable energy sources, like conventional solar panels.

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Kristen W. Lynch, PhD, has been appointed chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, following eight years as a tenured faculty member in the department.

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A new $1.5 million award from the National Institutes of Health will allow a University of Arkansas chemist to develop mathematical models to improve the reliability and efficiency of computer-aided drug design. The research could reduce the cost of drug discovery and lead to improvements in public health.

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Chemists have designed triple-threat cancer-fighting polymer capsules for guided drug delivery. They combine three traits: good imaging contrast with low-power ultrasound, stable packaging of the cancer drug doxorubicin, and ability to trigger drug release with low- or higher-power ultrasound.

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Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and North Carolina State University report in the journal Nature Communications that they are the first to grow graphene nanoribbons without a metal substrate.

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Scientists have developed a method to track perfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) in the body. PFAS are potentially toxic chemicals found in stain-resistant products, nonstick cookware, fire-fighting foams and, most recently, fast food wrappers.

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Just one month after major research findings showed dangerous PFAS present in more than one-third of fast food packaging tested, UAB and Notre Dame created a new technique to track PFASs in the body.

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The Electrochemical Society (ECS) is celebrating its 115th anniversary this year by giving the world a preview of what complete open access to peer-reviewed scientific research will look like. ECS will launch the first Free the Science Week, April 3-9, and take down the paywall to the entire ECS Digital Library, making over 132,000 scientific articles and abstracts free and accessible to everyone.

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Nemus Bioscience and the University of Mississippi report significant anti-MRSA synergy data utilizing proprietary cannabinoid-based anti-infective platforms

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With a more accurate understanding of the characteristics and function of the receptor MRGRPX2, University of North Carolina School of Medicine researchers were also able to create chemical probe that will allow them study the receptor more precisely.

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In a publication in the journal Nature released today (March 27, 2017), scientists from the Department of Biochemistry and Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have solved the structure of an enzyme caught in the act of attacking toluene — a chemical derived from wood and oil.

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Proton therapy is a promising form of radiation treatment used to kill cancerous cells and effectively halt their rapid reproduction, and the fundamental understanding for it is contained in the radiation induced water chemistry that occurs immediately after the interaction. The ensuing processes are therefore a subject of considerable scientific interest. Researchers describe their work exploring this ionization with an experimental setup, with enhanced temporal resolution, in this week’s Applied Physics Letters.

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Results from experiments and computational modeling studies that definitively identify the "active site" of a catalyst commonly used for making methanol from CO2 will guide the design of improved catalysts for transforming this pollutant to useful chemicals.

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The body’s ability to repair DNA damage declines with age, which causes gradual cell demise, overall bodily degeneration and greater susceptibility to cancer.

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Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM)—which enables the visualization of viruses, proteins, and other biological structures at the molecular level—is a critical tool used to advance biochemical knowledge. Now Berkeley Lab researchers have extended cryo-EM’s impact further by developing a new computational algorithm instrumental in constructing a 3-D atomic-scale model of bacteriophage P22 for the first time.

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Scientists at the University of Southampton working with colleagues at the University of Liverpool have developed a new method which has the potential to revolutionise the way we search for, design and produce new materials.

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The University of Adelaide has today announced the appointment of an international leader in engineering, Professor Anton Middelberg, as its new Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences.

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Since a couple of decades, metal-containing drugs have been successfully used to fight against certain types of cancer. The lack of knowledge about the underlying molecular mechanisms slows down the search for new and more efficient chemotherapeutic agents. An international team of scientists, led by Leticia González from the University of Vienna and Jacinto Sá from the Uppsala University, have developed a protocol that is able to detect how metal-based drugs interact with DNA.

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Berkeley Lab researchers have successfully added thread-level parallelism on top of MPI-level parallelism in the planewave density functional theory method within the popular software suite NWChem. An important step to ensuring that computational chemists are prepared to compute efficiently on next-generation exascale machines.

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Polystyrene has a glass transition temperature of about 100 C -- at room temperature it behaves like a solid material. But as its temperature approaches the glass transition temperature, polystyrene’s mechanical properties change drastically. This makes the ability to approximate glass transitions for confined geometries in polymers highly desirable. And now, as researchers report in this week's issue of The Journal of Chemical Physics, they’ve developed a simple formula to do just that.

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Standard antidepressant medications don’t work for everyone, and even when they do they are slow to kick in. In an effort to find better depression treatments, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine discovered that inhibiting an enzyme called Glyoxalase 1 (GLO1) relieves signs of depression in mice. Moreover, inhibiting GLO1 worked much faster than the conventional antidepressant Prozac.

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A multi-institutional team of researchers from Canada and the US has demonstrated steady state lasing with solution-processed nanoparticles called “colloidal quantum dots,” an important step on the path to improving laser tools for fiber optics, video projectors and more accurate medical testing technology. The work is reported today in a paper for the journal Nature.

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University of Utah engineers have discovered a new material made from a combination of the chemical elements calcium, cobalt and terbium that can create an efficient, inexpensive and bio-friendly material that can generate electricity through a thermoelectric process involving heat and cold air.

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UPTON, NY—Even plants have to live on an energy budget. While they’re known for converting solar energy into chemical energy in the form of sugars, plants have sophisticated biochemical mechanisms for regulating how they spend that energy. Making oils costs a lot. By exploring the details of this delicate energy balance, a group of scientists from the U.

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Writing in the March 17 issue of the journal Science, Missouri University of Science and Technology researchers say they have developed a way to “grow” thin layers of gold on single crystal wafers of silicon, remove the gold foils, and use them as substrates on which to grow other electronic materials.

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An algorithm based on levels of metabolites found in a blood sample can accurately predict whether a child is on the Autism spectrum of disorder (ASD), based upon a recent study.

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BGSU photochemist Dr. Alexis Ostrowski and her lab are venturing into a whole new world of materials with properties as yet unknown, but that offer the promise of beneficial applications in health, industry, agriculture and other fields.

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A team of researchers has developed a groundbreaking one-step, crystal growth process for making ultra-thin layers of material with molecular-sized pores. Researchers demonstrated the use of the material, called zeolite nanosheets, by making ultra-selective membranes for chemical separations. These new membranes can separate individual molecules based on shape and size, which could improve the energy-efficiency of chemical separation methods used to make everything from fuels to chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

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An international team of researchers found that fossil-like objects grew in natural spring water abundant in the early stages of the planet. But, they were inorganic materials that resulted from simple chemical reactions.

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A discovery, several years in the making, by University at Buffalo researchers proves that adult skin cells can be converted into neural crest cells (a type of stem cell) without any genetic modification, and that these stem cells can yield other cells that are present in the spinal cord and the brain. The applications could be significant, from studying genetic diseases in a dish to generating possible regenerative cures from the patient’s own cells.

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A new energy-efficient separation of rare earth elements could provide a new domestic source of critical materials.

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A team of NYU chemists has created self-assembled, three-dimensional DNA crystals that can bind a separate, dye-bearing strand—a breakthrough that enhances the functionality of these tiny building blocks.

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Results of tests provide evidence that exposure to a chemical mixture can disturb thyroid hormone signalling. The authors say that this adds weight to the suggestion that similar exposures can adversely affect brain development in unborn children.

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Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow Jaqueline Kiplinger was recognized this week with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) 2017 Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering award. Kiplinger was one of 12 women recognized this year internationally and the only recipient of this honor from the United States.

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Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in collaboration with the University of California – Irvine (UCI) have uncovered a significant new chemical attribute of plutonium, the identification and structural verification of the +2 oxidation state in a molecular system.

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Learning and memory depend on cells' ability to strengthen and weaken circuits in the brain. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine report that a protein involved in recycling other cell proteins plays an important role in this process.

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Researchers have reversed depression symptoms in mice simply by feeding them a probiotic bacteria found in yogurt. They also discovered a specific mechanism for how the bacteria affect mood, providing a direct link between gut health and mental health.