Journal Club

Highlighting recent, timely papers selected by Academy member labs

Category Archives: Chemistry

Heavy water tastes sweeter

Posted on April 16, 2021 by Carolyn Beans

In the 1930s, scientists discovered a heavier form of water. So-called “heavy water” (D2O) weighs more because the nucleus of each of its two hydrogen atoms contains not just a proton but a neutron as well. Known as deuterium, heavy … Continue reading →

How an animal’s teeth can reveal where it’s been

Posted on February 5, 2021 by Stephen Ornes

A careful measurement of isotope ratios in animals’ teeth could offer a new way to closely track their movements, according to a recent study that showed how the approach would work in Mongolian sheep and goat herds. Tooth enamel … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Enzyme helps to speedily create a key chemical bond in the lab, suggesting synthetic chemistry applications

Posted on January 22, 2018 by Jyoti Madhusoodanan

With just a few chemical tweaks, cellular enzymes can turn some of the most common amino acids into unique compounds that possess antimicrobial or medicinal properties. But in the lab, it’s much harder to derive these molecules when using conventional … Continue reading →

Categories: Biochemistry | Chemistry | Journal Club | Tagged GRiE, manzacidin C, Streptomyces griseus, synthetic chemistry | Leave a comment

Journal Club: New tool predicts which compounds taste bitter

Posted on October 14, 2017 by Carolyn Beans

Humans have 25 different taste receptors that register a range of bitter chemical compounds in everything from coffee and beer to dark chocolate and medicine. And yet, while humans can easily recognize bitterness, predicting whether a chemical compound will taste … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Study of volcanic gases offers new fundamental insights into the Earth’s carbon cycle

Posted on July 28, 2017 by Leslie Willoughby

To understand how the planet’s climate will evolve and has evolved over geologic time, scientists need to understand the Earth’s carbon cycle. In work recently published in Science, researchers offer new insights into that cycle, upending calculations about just how … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Ancient diet helps tell the story of Easter Island

Posted on July 21, 2017 by Carolyn Beans

Famous for its towering stone human figures, Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, has long been shrouded in mystery, with the demise of its people the subject of an intense debate. Now, new findings about what its residents ate hundreds of … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Engineered enzyme could streamline synthesis of nitrogen containing compounds

Posted on June 15, 2017 by Jessica P. Johnson

Researchers have re-engineered a bacterial enzyme to transform abundant alkanes into industrially important nitrogen-containing compounds that can be used to synthesize pharmaceuticals. In principle, the enzyme, now called P411CHA, could help streamline some methods for creating synthetic molecules, which often … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Shark blood compound offers up novel mechanism for stabilizing folded proteins

Posted on March 7, 2017 by Jessica P. Johnson

Sharks and other sea life often maintain high levels of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) in their blood, a compound vital to their surviving in the saline environment. TMAO helps maintain an osmotic balance between body tissues and sea water to prevent … Continue reading →

Categories: Biochemistry | Chemistry | Journal Club | Tagged blood, elastin-like polypeptide, model, osmolyte, protein folding, sharks, simulation, trimethylamine N-oxide | Leave a comment

Journal Club: Layer-cake chemistry offers up a cheap way to perform chemical tests

Posted on February 24, 2017 by Amber Dance

Sana Jahanshahi-Anbuhi started her study with a trip to the supermarket to buy Listerine breath strips, the sort that melt on your tongue in seconds. But the chemical engineering postdoc at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada wasn’t worried about bad … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Copper offers novel clues to ancient Earth’s “Great Oxidation Event”

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Charles Choi

Roughly 2.4 billion years ago, oxygen gas began suffusing Earth’s atmosphere in what scientists call the Great Oxidation Event. Much remains uncertain about this critical moment in history, but now researchers find that copper in ancient sediments could help track … Continue reading →

Categories: Chemistry | Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences | Journal Club | Tagged atmosphere, copper, great oxidation event, oxygen | Leave a comment

Identifying antibiotic “elicitors” with a new high throughput approach

Posted on May 9, 2014 by pnas

Most clinically used antibiotics actually originate from bacteria, derived from small molecules produced by gene clusters in the microbes. Recent investigations have revealed that most bacterial gene clusters are inactive or “silent,” raising hopes that finding ways to activate them … Continue reading →

Categories: Biochemistry | Chemistry | Leave a comment