Another Friday, another batch of Research Highlights for you all to enjoy.

Steve's is about a pretty clever hydrogel. Hydrogels are potential carriers for drugs, but how do you get them to release their cargo in the right place? Aptamers are the answer...

Gav has written about some work by Richard Zare's group that looks at how viruses might 'break in' to cells. They used surface plasmon resonance to study a model virus attaching itself to a model cell.

And finally...oligoamide foldamers are strings of amides or amino acids that...well, fold up. A bit like proteins or DNA do. But if you can get them to fold AROUND something, you can use them to trap molecules. Jane tells us more about work done to this end in France and China.

Hope you enjoy this crop - if you have any feedback or comments, please let us know!

Neil

Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Posted by Neil Withers at 04:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Happy Friday everyone, and welcome to this week's batch of research highlights.

Fullerenes:
Buckyballs act just like giant atoms, complete with s, p and d orbitals that are bound to the sphere's hollow centre

Antitumour agents:
Hiding a potent, but insoluble, anticancer drug inside a cage complex represents a new approach to the use of inorganic chemotherapeutics

Self-assembly:
Discrete complexes comprising stacks of up to nine aromatic molecules can be assembled in one step from a few simple building blocks

As for last week, anyone can read the articles for free, but you need to sign up for a free account first.

Neil

Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Posted by Neil Withers at 05:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Each Friday, the Nature Chemistry website will be updated with three new research highlights about interesting work that has caught the attention of the editors, here is this week's line up:

Heterogeneous catalysis:
Scanning transmission electron tomography is used to create 3D images of active sites in nanoscale catalysts

Surface chemistry:
Subsurface carbon and hydrogen have an important role in selective palladium-catalysed alkyne hydrogenation

Alkaloid biogenesis:
Indole alkaloids extracted from closely related fungi lead to questions about how their biochemical pathways have evolved

The highlights are free to access, but you need to have a (free) nature.com account.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Chief Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 04:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)