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Category: chemistry

An artificial intelligence technique—machine learning—is helping accelerate the development of highly tunable materials known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that have important applications in chemical separations, adsorption, catalysis, and sensing.

Utilizing data about the properties of more than 200 existing MOFs, the machine learning platform was trained to help guide the development of new materials by predicting an often-essential property: water stability. Using guidance from the , researchers can avoid the time-consuming task of synthesizing and then experimentally testing new candidate MOFs for their aqueous stability. Already, researchers are expanding the model to predict other important MOF properties.

Supported by the Office of Science’s Basic Energy Sciences program within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the research was reported Nov. 9 in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence. The research was conducted in the Center for Understanding and Control of Acid Gas-Induced Evolution of Materials for Energy (UNCAGE-ME), a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center located at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Rank in social hierarchy is a condition not solely claimed by humans. In the animal kingdom, male peacocks exhibit brightly colored plumes to illustrate dominance, and underwater, male fish show pops of bright colors to do the same. Despite the links identified between social status, physiology and behavior, the molecular basis of social status has not been known, until now.

“We discovered that two paralogous androgen receptor genes control social status in African cichlid fish,” reports Beau Alward in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Alward is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Houston with a joint appointment in biology and biochemistry. Paralogs are duplicate genes; androgens are hormones like testosterone necessary for male sexual development.

“Testosterone binds to to exert its effects. What we found through genome editing is that the two genes encoding these receptors are required for different aspects of social status,” said Alward. “This type of coordination of social status may be fundamental across species that rely on social information to optimally guide physiology and behavior.”

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Metabolites from marine fungi have hogged the limelight in drug discovery because of their promise as therapeutic agents. A number of metabolites related to marine fungi have been discovered from various sources which are known to possess a range of activities as antibacterial, antiviral and anticancer agents. Although, over a thousand marine fungi based metabolites have already been reported, none of them have reached the market yet which could partly be related to non-comprehensive screening approaches and lack of sustained lead optimization. The origin of these marine fungal metabolites is varied as their habitats have been reported from various sources such as sponge, algae, mangrove derived fungi, and fungi from bottom sediments. The importance of these natural compounds is based on their cytotoxicity and related activities that emanate from the diversity in their chemical structures and functional groups present on them. This review covers the majority of anticancer compounds isolated from marine fungi during 2012–2016 against specific cancer cell lines.

Marine fungi are important source of secondary metabolites useful for the drug discovery purposes. Even though marine fungi are less explored in comparison to their terrestrial counterparts, a number of useful hits have been obtained from the drug discovery perspective adding to their importance in the natural product discovery (Molinski et al., 2009; Butler et al., 2014), which have yielded a wide range of chemically diverse agents with antibacterial, antiviral and anticancer properties in animal systems. Starting with the celebrated example of cephalosporins, marine fungi have provided unique chemical skeletons that could be used to develop drugs of clinical importance (Bhadury et al., 2006; Saleem et al., 2007; Javed et al., 2011; Sithranga and Kathiresan, 2011). Fungi, in general, have been generous source of drugs as evidenced by the isolation of many drugs in use such as paclitaxel, camptothecin, vincristine, torreyanic acid and cytarabine to name a few.

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Three-dimensional (3D) nanostructured materials—those with complex shapes at a size scale of billionths of a meter—that can conduct electricity without resistance could be used in a range of quantum devices. For example, such 3D superconducting nanostructures could find application in signal amplifiers to enhance the speed and accuracy of quantum computers and ultrasensitive magnetic field sensors for medical imaging and subsurface geology mapping. However, traditional fabrication tools such as lithography have been limited to 1-D and 2-D nanostructures like superconducting wires and thin films.

Now, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University, and Bar-Ilan University in Israel have developed a platform for making 3D superconducting nano-architectures with a prescribed organization. As reported in the Nov. 10 issue of Nature Communications, this platform is based on the self-assembly of DNA into desired 3D shapes at the nanoscale. In DNA self-assembly, a single long strand of DNA is folded by shorter complementary “staple” strands at specific locations—similar to origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.

“Because of its structural programmability, DNA can provide an assembly platform for building designed nanostructures,” said co-corresponding author Oleg Gang, leader of the Soft and Bio Nanomaterials Group at Brookhaven Lab’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) and a professor of chemical engineering and of applied physics and at Columbia Engineering. “However, the fragility of DNA makes it seem unsuitable for functional device fabrication and nanomanufacturing that requires inorganic materials. In this study, we showed how DNA can serve as a scaffold for building 3D nanoscale architectures that can be fully “converted” into inorganic materials like superconductors.”

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The glow could help scientists determine if a subsurface ocean on Europa is a good place to look for life.

Intense radiation from the giant planet Jupiter causes the night side of its moon Europa to visibly glow in the dark – a phenomenon that could help scientists learn if it can sustain simple forms of life, according to a new study.

The findings, published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy, were the result of experiments by NASA scientists to study how Jupiter’s radiation affects the chemistry of Europa, which is thought to harbor a subsurface ocean of water.

And though telescopes haven’t yet observed the glow, the possibility that Europa glows in the dark could be verified by two probes that will study the moon in the coming years.

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At high concentrations, reactive oxygen species—known as oxidants—are harmful to cells in all organisms and have been linked to aging. But a study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has now shown that low levels of the oxidant hydrogen peroxide can stimulate an enzyme that helps slow down the aging of yeast cells.

One benefit of antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, is that they neutralize —known as oxidants—which may otherwise react with important molecules in the body and destroy their biological functions. Larger amounts of oxidants can cause serious damage to DNA, cell membranes and proteins for example. Our have therefore developed powerful defense mechanisms to get rid of these oxidants, which are formed in our normal metabolism.

It was previously believed that oxidants were only harmful, but recently, scientists have begun to understand that they also have positive functions. Now, the new research from Chalmers University of Technology shows that the well-known hydrogen peroxide can actually slow down the aging of yeast cells. Hydrogen peroxide is a chemical used for hair and tooth whitening, among other things. It is also one of the metabolically produced oxidants that is harmful at higher concentrations.

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A team of researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has discovered a new method that makes it possible to transform electricity into hydrogen or chemical products solely using microwaves—without cables and without any type of contact with electrodes. This represents a revolution in the field of energy research and a key development for the process of industrial decarbonisation, as well as for the future of the automotive sector and the chemical industry, among many others. The study has been published in the latest edition of Nature Energy, where the discovery is explained.

The technology developed and patented by the UPV and CSIC is based on the phenomenon of the reduction of solid materials. This method makes it possible to carry out electrochemical processes directly without requiring electrodes, which simplifies and significantly cheapens its practical use, as it provides more freedom in the design of the structure of the device and choosing the operation conditions, mainly the temperature. It is a technology with great practical potential, especially for its use in storing energy and producing synthetic fuels and green chemical products. This aspect has significant importance today, as both transportation and industry are immersed in a transition to decarbonise, meaning they have to meet very demanding goals between 2030 and 2040 to decrease the consumption of energy and substances from fossil sources, mainly natural gas and oil, highlights José Manuel Serra, research lecturer of the CSIC at the Chemical Technology Institute.

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Origami-inspired tissue engineering — using eggshells, plant leaves, marine sponges, and paper as substrates.

Ira Pastor ideaXme life sciences ambassador interviews Dr. Gulden Camci-Unal, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, at the Department Chemical Engineering, Francis College of Engineering, UMass Lowell.

Ira Pastor comments:

A few episodes ago ideaXme hosted the University of Michigan’s Dr. Bruce Carlson. We spoke to him about the interesting topic of the importance of “substrate” in regenerative processes, for both the maintenance of normal tissue functions, and in the migration of cells or changes to tissue architecture that are part of healing processes.

Substrate is broadly defined as the surface or material on, or from which, cells / tissues live, grow, or obtain nourishment, and have both biochemical, as well as biomechanical functions.

Today, on ideaXme to discuss some really fascinating, next generation work that is going on in this domain, we are joined Dr. Gulden Camci-Unal, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department Chemical Engineering, Francis College of Engineering, UMass Lowell.

Dr Camci-Unal received her Ph.D. in Chemistry at Iowa State University (USA) and her M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees both in Chemical Engineering at Middle East Technical University (Turkey).

Dr. Camci-Unal’s research is at the interface of biomaterials and bioengineering, including the design, synthesis, and characterization of functional biomaterials for applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, development of in vitro disease models for personalized medicine, as well as work in the area low-cost point of care diagnostics.

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To better understand how the novel coronavirus behaves and how it can be stopped, scientists have completed a three-dimensional map that reveals the location of every atom in an enzyme molecule critical to SARS-CoV-2 reproduction.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutron scattering to identify key information to improve the effectiveness of drug inhibitors designed to block the virus’s replication mechanism. The research is published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease, expresses long chains of proteins composed of approximately 1,900 amino acid residues. For the virus to reproduce, those chains have to be broken down and cut into smaller strands by an enzyme called the main protease. The active protease enzyme is formed from two identical protein molecules held together by hydrogen bonds. Developing a drug that inhibits or blocks the protease activity will prevent the virus from replicating and spreading to other cells in the body.

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If this thing becomes successful, I think it could enable plastics to replace steel in a lot of vehicles and machinery.

Engineers are always on the lookout for materials that can improve the performance of their existing products. Carmakers too are always on the lookout to make lighter yet stronger parts to help cars perform better. And, in most cases, these solutions come at a pretty hefty cost.

However, a bunch of Indian engineers at the Bengaluru R&D Facility of Saudi Arabia’s Sabic petrochemical company have created a plastic that is stronger than steel while being extremely lightweight. They’ve created a resin-metal based hybrid solution that they call Noryl GTX.

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