Chemistry news and discussions

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weatheriscool
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New study confirms 'rippled sheet' protein structure predicted in 1953
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-rippled-s ... otein.html
by University of California - Santa Cruz
An unusual protein structure known as a "rippled beta sheet," first predicted in 1953, has now been created in the laboratory and characterized in detail using X-ray crystallography.

The new findings, published in July in Chemical Science, may enable the rational design of unique materials based on the rippled sheet architecture.

"Our study establishes the rippled beta sheet layer configuration as a motif with general features and opens the road to structure-based design of unique molecular architectures, with potential for materials development and biomedical applications," said Jevgenij Raskatov, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz and corresponding author of the paper.

Proteins come in an enormous range of shapes and sizes to carry out their myriad structural and functional roles in living cells. Certain common structural motifs, such as the alpha helix, are found in many protein structures.
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Researchers explore enzymes that use a cation, not oxygen-addition, to drive reactions
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-explore-e ... tions.html
by Tracey Peake, North Carolina State University
Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Texas at Austin have defined the structure of a substrate-bound iron 2-oxoglutarate (Fe/2OG) enzyme to explore whether these enzymes could be used to create a wide array of molecules. They probed the enzyme's active site to determine its ability to bind with different substrates. Additionally, rather than oxygen-addition, they saw that Fe/2OG enzymes likely utilize cations—highly reactive species—to drive desaturation during catalysis. The work, published in Nature Communications, could lead to the use of Fe/2OG enzymes in making a wide array of valuable molecules.

Enzymes in the Fe/2OG family are naturally occurring—they are found in everything from bacteria to plants and animals. As such, these enzymes have the potential to be used as a greener, more efficient platform for creating molecules such as vinyl isonitriles, which have antibiotic properties. However, the pathways by which Fe/2OG enzymes create these molecules are poorly understood.
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New phases of water detected
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-phases.html
by University of Cambridge
Scientists at the University of Cambridge have discovered that water in a one-molecule layer acts like neither a liquid nor a solid, and that it becomes highly conductive at high pressures.

Much is known about how "bulk water" behaves: it expands when it freezes, and it has a high boiling point. But when water is compressed to the nanoscale, its properties change dramatically.

By developing a new way to predict this unusual behavior with unprecedented accuracy, the researchers have detected several new phases of water at the molecular level.

Water trapped between membranes or in tiny nanoscale cavities is common—it can be found in everything from membranes in our bodies to geological formations. But this nanoconfined water behaves very differently from the water we drink.
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Scientist discovers new oxidation state of rhodium
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-scientist ... odium.html
by University of Freiburg
Mayara da Silva Santos, doctoral candidate at the University of Freiburg's Institute of Physics, has discovered a new oxidation state of rhodium. This chemical element is one of the most catalytically important platinum-group metals and is used, for example, in catalytic converters for automobiles.

Rhodium is actually already well studied. What helped Silva Santos make the rare discovery of a surprisingly high oxidation state was a new approach: As part of her doctoral dissertation, she is studying unusual transition metal oxides. Her discovery of so-called rhodium(VII) has just been published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
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Researchers find new sugar substitutes in citrus that could change food and beverage industry
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-sugar-sub ... erage.html
by University of Florida
Americans' love affair with sugar can be a deadly attraction that sometimes leads to major health problems, including obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Finding natural, non-caloric sugar substitutes is desirable but challenging. However, researchers at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences have made a breakthrough—discovering new, natural sweeteners in citrus for the first time.

This finding opens opportunities for the food industry to produce food and beverages with lower sugar content and lower calories while maintaining sweetness and taste using natural products.

Yu Wang, associate professor of food science at UF/IFAS, managed the multi-year project that found eight new sweetener or sweetness-enhancing compounds in 11 citrus cultivars.

"We were able to identify a natural source for an artificial sweetener, oxime V, that had never been identified from any natural source previously," said Wang, a faculty member at the UF/IFAS Citrus Research and Education Center in Lake Alfred, Florida. "This creates expanded opportunities for citrus growers and for breeding cultivars to be selected to obtain high yields of sweetener compounds."
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Automated carbohydrate synthesizer produces polysaccharides of record-breaking length
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-automated ... ength.html
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

A team of researchers with members from Peking University and WuXi AppTec (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., has designed and built an automated carbohydrate synthesizer that produced polysaccharides of record-breaking length. In their paper published in the journal Nature Synthesis the group describes how they built their device and its possible uses. Hanchao Cheng and Peng George Wang with the Southern University of Science and Technology, in China, have published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue outlining the work by the team in China.

As Cheng and Wang note, carbohydrates play a very important role in biology—they are a biochemical source of energy. And as they also note, naturally occurring carbohydrates tend to be structurally undefined, which means they are made up of mixtures of molecules, making them quite complex.

For this reason, well-defined carbohydrates are prized. Unfortunately, synthesizing them has proven to be difficult, most particularly as they grow larger. In this new effort, the researchers have created a means for speeding up the process—an automated synthesizer, one that overcomes problems associated with other machines meant to do the same.

The synthesizer created by the team has three parts: a synthesizing system, a system for monitoring progress and software that is used to control the hardware. The synthesizer involves a stirrer and heat controls, and a lamp that is used to incite light induced reactions.
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Developing an eco-friendly ammonia catalyst
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-eco-frien ... alyst.html
by Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology
A DGIST research team led by Professor Sangaraju Shanmugam, Department of Energy Engineering, developed a catalyst that converts nitric oxide (NO) to ammonia (NH3). This electrochemical technology offers high Faradaic efficiency and low overpotential and produces NH3 in an eco-friendly manner.

NH3 is an important chemical raw material in the fertilizer, textile, and pharmaceutical industries, and it is considered a carbon-free hydrogen carrier with a high energy density. Typically, NH3 is produced using the Haber–Bosch process; however, this process is responsible for approximately 1–2% of global CO2 emissions.

The electrochemical conversion of NO to NH3, an alternative to the Haber–Bosch process, has received considerable attention. This eco-friendly method consumes the air pollutant NO gas to produce NH3. Therefore, this promising approach can replace conventional methods without affecting the environment or emitting CO2.

However, owing to the corrosive nature of NO gas, the morphology of the metal-nanoparticle electrocatalyst degrades during electrosynthesis. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain a catalyst material with high stability that facilitates long-term electrochemical NH3 synthesis.
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Developing stable water-splitting catalysts that don't require expensive iridium
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-stable-wa ... quire.html
by Mike Williams, Rice University
Creating a hydrogen economy is no small task, but Rice University engineers have discovered a method that could make oxygen evolution catalysis in acids, one of the most challenging topics in water electrolysis for producing clean hydrogen fuels, more economical and practical.

The lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Haotian Wang at Rice's George R. Brown School of Engineering has replaced rare and expensive iridium with ruthenium, a far more abundant precious metal, as the positive-electrode catalyst in a reactor that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The lab's successful addition of nickel to ruthenium dioxide (RuO2) resulted in a robust anode catalyst that produced hydrogen from water electrolysis for thousands of hours under ambient conditions.

"There's huge industry interest in clean hydrogen," Wang said. "It's an important energy carrier and also important for chemical fabrication, but its current production contributes a significant portion of carbon emissions in the chemical manufacturing sector globally. We want to produce it in a more sustainable way, and water-splitting using clean electricity is widely recognized as the most promising option."
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A first-of-its-kind framework to characterize hydrogels for biomedical scientists and engineers

by National University of Ireland, Galway
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-first-of- ... dical.html
Researchers at CÚRAM have this week published an interdisciplinary framework that enables the development of extracellular matrix-inspired hydrogels for biomedical applications.

An extracellular matrix (ECM) is a three-dimensional cementing material that gives structural support to our cells. Hydrogels mimicking this extracellular matrix (ECM) have become increasingly attractive in biomedical science research due to their tunability and biocompatibility. However, hydrogel development and characterization require an interdisciplinary approach that is seldom fully achieved as it needs an extraordinary degree of researcher skill.

This review is a first-of-its-kind approach that will provide information on available tools for properly characterizing ECM-based hydrogels and interpreting the resulting data. It also provides an accurate roadmap that can be used by biomedical researchers when attempting to bridge the gap between material science and biomedicine.

The review paper was published by Matter.

Lead author and Director of CÚRAM Professor Abhay Pandit says that "with this proposed review, we aim to combine the knowledge of chemistry, material science, and biology by critically discussing the available tools to properly characterize ECM-based hydrogels and interpreting the resulting data, leading to an accurate roadmap to be applied in this exciting field."

ECM hydrogel development and characterization involve a wide array of interdisciplinary tools; this review will appeal to chemists, material scientists, engineers, and biologists working in the field. This review provides a concise, complete, and easy-to-follow guide for advanced undergraduates, early postgraduate researchers, industry (MedTech, Pharmaceutical, and BioTech), and experts in this interdisciplinary field.
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Charged porphyrins: The key to investigating the properties of stacked ion pairs
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-porphyrin ... d-ion.html
by Ritsumeikan University

Ions are created when an atom or molecule either loses or gains electrons, thus gaining a charge. When two oppositely charged ions are combined, it can lead to the creation of an ion pair. The influence of different ion pairs on the physical properties of the material they are present in has been widely studied as it can lead to the creation of new functional electronic materials.

Of particular interest is the study of π-electronic ion pairs for their ability to employ intermolecular interactions to produce dimension-controlled assemblies. These are useful for creating new electronic materials.

These interactions (known as "iπ−iπ interactions") cause the stacking of ions into π-stacked ion pairs (π-sips). Controlling the electronic state of these π-sips can create π-stacked radical pairs (π-srps). Both of these have attractive properties for the creation of electronic materials, but have not been studied much owing to the difficulties in preparation and structure determination.
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