Scientists have for the first time filmed the real-time growth and contraction of Palladium nanoparticles, opening new avenues for utilising and recycling precious metal catalysts. Researchers at the University of Nottingham’s School of Chemistry used transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to observe the complete lifecycle of palladium nanoparticles in a liquid environment, from nucleation through growth to dissolution, with the entire cycle repeating multiple times. This study has been published today in Nanoscale. One of the most important applications of metal nanoparticles is…

Sugar coatings aren’t only for candies; they also help viruses, like the ones that cause COVID-19, hide from their hosts’ immune system. Now, researchers have developed a universal vaccine that targets coronaviruses and the sugars that they use as cover. As demonstrated in animal studies, the vaccine removed sugar molecules from an area of a coronavirus spike protein that rarely mutates and created effective and plentiful antibodies to inactivate the virus. Chi-Huey Wong, a chemistry professor at Scripps Research, will…

Traditionally, chemists have relied on well-established but limiting methods to synthesize these molecules. This new research presents a fundamentally different approach. Researchers at Indiana University and Wuhan University in China have unveiled a groundbreaking chemical process that could streamline the development of pharmaceutical compounds, chemical building blocks that influence how drugs interact with the body. Their study, published in Chem, describes a novel light-driven reaction that efficiently produces tetrahydroisoquinolines, a group of chemicals that play a crucial role in medicinal chemistry. Tetrahydroisoquinolines serve…

Organelles in cells were originally often independent cells, which were incorporated by host cells and lost their independence in the course of evolution. A team of biologists headed by Professor Dr Eva Nowack at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) are examining the way in which this assimilation process occurs and how quickly. They now describe their findings about an intermediate stage in this process in the scientific journal Science Advances. Eukaryotic cells – i.e. cells with a nucleus – contain…