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Biorealistic organic electrochemical neurons enabled by ion-tunable antiambipolarity in mixed ion-electron conducting polymers.

An artificial organic neuron that closely mimics the characteristics of biological nerve cells has been created by researchers at Linköping University (LiU), Sweden. This artificial neuron can stimulate natural nerves, making it a promising technology for various medical treatments in the future.

Work to develop increasingly functional artificial nerve cells continues at the Laboratory for Organic Electronics, LOE. In 2022, a team of scientists led by associate professor Simone Fabiano demonstrated how an artificial organic neuron could be integrated into a living carnivorous plant to control the opening and closing of its maw. This synthetic nerve cell met 2 of the 20 characteristics that differentiate it from a biological nerve cell.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology have discovered the biosynthesis of a rare compound called benzoxazolinate, which is found in Benzobactins – a class of bacterial natural products that have unique biological activity due to its two-ring structure.

By utilizing genomic research, scientists were able to uncover the previously unknown genes responsible for its formation. This breakthrough opens doors to the discovery of a multitude of new natural compounds with medical applications.

Microorganisms in their natural habitat often face varying environmental conditions and have evolved to produce a diverse range of natural products with various chemical compositions and functions to aid their survival.

Researchers have observed steric effects—the interactions of molecules depending on their spatial orientation (not just between their electrons involved in bonding)—in a chemical reaction involving non-polar molecules for the first time. The breakthrough opens the door to an entirely new way to control the products of chemical reactions.

A paper describing the research team’s findings was published in the journal Science on Jan. 12.

One of the central goals of chemistry is to develop new methods of controlling chemical reactions. For the most part, control of chemical reactions involves understanding of the interactions between the electrons of different atoms. These “electronic” effects govern many of the properties and behavior of chemicals and the changes they undergo during reactions.

“Suppose you knew everything there was to know about a water molecule—the chemical formula, the bond angle, etc.,” says Joseph Thywissen, a professor in the Department of Physics and a member of the Centre for Quantum Information & Quantum Control at the University of Toronto.

“You might know everything about the molecule, but still not know there are waves on the ocean, much less how to surf them,” he says. “That’s because when you put a bunch of molecules together, they behave in a way you probably cannot anticipate.”

Thywissen is describing the concept in physics known as emergence: the relationship between the behavior and characteristics of individual particles and large numbers of those particles. He and his collaborators have taken a first step in understanding this transition from “one-to-many” particles by studying not one, not many, but two isolated, interacting particles, in this case potassium atoms.

Year 2022 Basically this can create diamonds from trash.

Laser compression of PET plastics mimics the chemistry inside Uranus and may offer a way to simply produce nanodiamonds.

In this interview, News Medical speaks to Assistant Professor Ryan Jackson about his latest work, published in tandem Nature papers, detailing the discovery of a new CRISPR immune system.

Please can you introduce yourself and tell us about your professional background?

I am an Assistant Professor at Utah State University (USU). I use biochemical and structural techniques to understand how the molecules that perform the reactions of life function. I’ve been working in the CRISPR field since 2011. I started as a postdoc in Blake Wiedenheft’s lab at Montana State University, and in 2016 I started my own research lab at USU. I earned both of my degrees (a B.S. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry) from USU, so joining the faculty was like coming home. My research lab specializes in determining the structure and function of newly discovered and obscure CRISPR systems.

Mosquitoes that transmit dengue and other viruses have evolved growing resistance to insecticides in parts of Asia, and novel ways to control them are desperately needed, new research warns.

Health authorities commonly fog mosquito-infested areas with clouds of insecticide, and resistance has long been a concern, but the scale of the problem was not well understood.

Japanese scientist Shinji Kasai and his team examined mosquitos from several countries in Asia as well as Ghana and found a series of mutations had made some virtually impervious to popular pyrethroid-based chemicals like permethrin.

A breakthrough in quantum research – the first detection of excitons (electrically neutral quasiparticles) in a topological insulator has been achieved by an international team of scientists collaborating within the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat. This discovery paves the way for a new generation of light-driven computer chips and quantum technologies. It was enabled thanks to smart material design in Würzburg, the birthplace of topological insulators. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

<em>Nature Communications</em> is a peer-reviewed, open-access, multidisciplinary, scientific journal published by Nature Portfolio. It covers the natural sciences, including physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, and earth sciences. It began publishing in 2010 and has editorial offices in London, Berlin, New York City, and Shanghai.

Under normal temperature and pressure conditions, the reactor could efficiently convert plastic bottles and CO₂ into CO, syngas, and glycolic acid.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge developed a first-of-its-kind system that can simultaneously convert plastic waste and greenhouse gases into two chemical products by drawing energy from the sun.

The results are reported in the journal Nature Synthesis.

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