Category Archives: Chemistry

The power of data shared

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In a world of interdisciplinary research, we need to make data freely available, says Katie Ember

Better Science through Better Data writing competition winner Katie Ember

Every Monday in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Chemistry, the Campbell group gather in Room 233 for a lab meeting. If you’re hosting the meeting, you bring cake. Or you forget and everyone pretends they’re not feeling a bit hungry and disappointed. Then, two scientists in the group present that month’s work.

Every Friday in the Centre for Regenerative Medicine, a fifteen minute cycle from the School of Chemistry, the Forbes group file into the first floor meeting room. After battling with the “motion-activated” lights, we all talk through what we’ve achieved that week.

Teamwork

The reason I go to two lab meetings in one week is because I’m attempting to detect liver damage using laser light. It’s multidisciplinary and it’s hard: requiring input from biologists, physicists and transplant surgeons from different institutes. The end result is that I spend about four hours each week not doing science but discussing it. Whilst this may seem like a strange way to do research, I cannot overstate how important it is. Continue reading →

A celebration of cryo-EM

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Here at Nature Methods, we were quite excited yesterday to wake up to the news that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry had been awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson for their seminal developments in cryo-electron microscopy (better known as cryo-EM) which now enable high-resolution biomolecule structure determination. This is a technique we have been watching closely since 2013, when the first papers (including one of our own) realizing the capability of near-atomic-resolution structure determination with cryo-EM were published.

Though much of the excitement about cryo-EM is quite recent, the Nobel Prize is a good reminder to us all that the essential foundations of this technology were laid decades ago. We celebrated such developments, both old and new, in our 2015 Method of the Year issue featuring cryo-EM.

To commemorate this well-deserved Nobel Prize, Nature Research presents an editorially curated collection of papers published in our pages – including methods and protocols, biological results generated using cryo-EM technology, and reviews, news and comment. Check it out!

Do it for science – not for tenure

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Career advice from a Nobel Laureate

By Judith Reichel

I recently had the pleasure of joining the 67th Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting at Lake Constance in the south of Germany. The weeklong meeting alternates its main focus between chemistry, physics, and medicine & physiology each year — the three categories of natural sciences the Nobel Prizes are awarded for. This year the focus was back on chemistry, and I was lucky enough to be invited by the organisers to cover the event on their blog.

Throughout the week I met handpicked junior researchers, talented fellow science communicators and journalists, and — above all — sat down with Nobel Laureates for one-on-one interviews.

One of them was Martin Chalfie, who won the 2008 prize in Chemistry with Osamu Shimomura and Roger Y. Tsien for their development of the now widely used Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) tag. Inserting the gene sequence for GFP into a host organism produces the protein within a cell, which allows for the visualization of intricate biological processes.

Chalfie talking to students at Lindau 2017

Chalfie talking to students at Lindau 2017{credit}Christian Flemming/Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Young Scientists in conversation with Martin Chalfie{/credit}

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Reflections on the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science program

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Muireann Irish on celebrating diversity in science

Springtime in Paris seems a fitting backdrop for any awards ceremony but particularly so in the case of the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science program. I recently had the honour of attending the 2017 International Awards along with 14 other early career researchers from around the globe, as part of the L’Oréal-UNESCO International Rising Talents Fellowship.

FWIS IRT ceremony 2017 Continue reading →

‘Volcanic’ nanotherapy

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The research was inspired by the dynamic resulting from deep ocean volcanic eruptions.

The research was inspired by the dynamic resulting from deep ocean volcanic eruptions.{credit}Nature Picture Library / Alamy Stock Photo{/credit}

In order to stack nanoclusters of oxygen-rich zinc peroxide in a way that allows it to be used for cancer therapy, researchers simulate a natural phenomenon, which usually results from underwater volcanic eruptions, inside the lab.

Nature Middle East sits down with Mady Elbahri, one of the authors of this new research. Elbahri, an Egyptian scientist, is a professor of nanochemistry and nanoengineering at the school of chemical engineering, Aalto University, in Finland.

NME: You’ve come up with a new nanotherapy tool for cancer by simulating a process called the “Leidenfrost dynamic”. Can you explain it to me? Where did you draw inspiration for it?

Mady Elbahri: Well, we’re all familiar with the Leidenfrost phenomenon and [we may] have observed it while cooking in the kitchen, when a water drop touches a very hot pan’s surface. Instead of the expected rapid evaporation, the drop starts to move and dance on the hot surface. I observed this phenomenon in my kitchen a few years ago and contemplated its origin and the idea of employing it for nanosynthesis. Based on the knowledge I collected about this process, I introduced the new concept of “Leidenfrost nanochemistry”, which means synthesis of nanoparticles using the Leidenfrost effect.

NME: Can you walk me through your methods of creating nanoclusters of zinc peroxide using this new method?

ElBahri: In our latest study, we extend applicability of the phenomenon by mimicking the activity of the volcanos deep in the ocean. In this version of the Leidenfrost process, synthesis of nanoparticles starts at the bottom of a hot bath in an overheated zone at the vapor-liquid interface. Subsequently, the particles erupt towards the colder region of liquid-air interface for further growth. By such type of physical separation we are able to tailor the size of the particles.

NME: You mention in your paper that tailoring the size of the nanoparticles produced can selectively kill cancer cells. Can you elaborate more on this?

Elbahri: Tailoring the size can directly affect the oxygen release. Size plays an important role in this therapeutic process; to ensure a uniform effect, such particles should be equal in size. Also, the drug should not harm healthy cells and fibroblasts and so you need to adjust the size in a way that it can selectively destroy the cancer cells without affecting the others.

NME: How do you plan on building on this research in the future?

Elbahri: Further research can help us acquire the best therapeutic response with respect to size and dose of the nanoparticles. I also aim to transfer this knowledge to Egypt. … It will be my honor to support my motherland in getting its deserved scientific position in the world.

Interested in knowing how Elbahri and his colleauges drew their inspiration for this study? Listen to the new episode of Nature Middle East Podcast for the story behind the research.

The talent prize that flies the Spanish flag for organometallic chemistry

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In 2016 Eva Hevia published her 100th paper, had her second child, celebrated her 40th birthday, and won a £14k prize which she will use to strengthen links between scientists in the UK and her native Spain. David Payne attended the prizegiving.

Hevia, professor of inorganic chemisty at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, described herself as a “molecular architect” after receiving the Society of Spanish Researchers in the UK’s inaugural Emerging Talent Award at the Spanish Embassy in London this week.

embassy

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No such animal

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Nobel Laureate Dan Shechtman describes the structure of quasi-crystals, the discovery of which won him the scorn of colleagues in the 1980’s and then the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2011.

 

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Five career tips from Ripley Ballou

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We sat down with Rip at the Naturejobs career expo, Boston, to talk about his career and the advice he would give to other scientists starting theirs.

Rip’s had an interesting life; he started his career as a researcher at the US army’s Walter Reed Institute of Research, where he once exposed himself to malarial mosquitoes in a bid to see if his malarial vaccine worked. It didn’t, and that experience has motivated him in his career ever since. He’s now the head of US vaccines at GSK.

Here’s a word art graphic of five points from Rip’s talk, by Jacopo Sacquegno.

Sketch_5Tips_tweet_NJCE-smaller

{credit}jacopo sacquegno{/credit}

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Portrait of a Chemist: From a wartime fascination with chemistry to advising inner-city groups

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Peter Gallant found his love for chemistry as a schoolboy during the war while recovering from polio. After 30 years of working with rockets and nuclear power, he went on to apply his chemical experience in the voluntary sector advising inner-city groups.

He speaks to Alex Jackson about his lifelong passion for science.

“I read chemistry books like other people read detective stories,” says affable, wide-eyed 86-year-old Peter Gallant. Gallant’s story is one of remarkable fortitude that in recent years has seen him awarded an MBE.

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“I read chemistry books like other people read detective stories,” says Peter Gallant.
Photograph: Stephen Lake/Royal Society of Chemistry)

Early life

Growing up in the early 1930s in Edgware, London, Gallant’s early childhood was much like many of his schoolmates. Both his parents worked in the admiralty, his dad supplying crews for ships, and his mum, a secretary. An only child, he recalls how after class he would devour books, play with train sets, and listen avidly to his parents’ records. Yet one day at the age of nine, his life would dramatically change. Taken ill in the summer of 1938, Gallant was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, a nasty bone disease which infects and inflames the bone or bone marrow.

“It was a killer. Back then, the death rate was about 50%. There were no antibiotics; the only treatment was major orthopaedic surgery,” says Gallant, describing how the infection spread rapidly through his body. He had operations on the femur and tibia of his right leg, his pelvis and arms, leaving his right hip at about 30 degrees and right leg 6cm shorter than his left. “I went into hospital in June 1938 and didn’t come out until September 1942 — more than four years later. At the start I was so ill, there was no question of any education.”

“I went into hospital in June 1938 and didn’t come out until September 1942 — more than four years later. At the start I was so ill, there was no question of any education.”

Evacuated from Guy’s Hospital during the Munich crisis for fears of German air raids, he was taken to Treloar, a children’s hospital in Alton, Hampshire. He vividly recalls the five hospital ward blocks, each arranged in an arc on a hillside, facing the train tracks. His few hospital perks included watching the trains – a “huge hobby” – a daily half pint of stout “to build me up”, and being wheeled out onto the balcony in the summer of 1941 to see an eclipse.

“For four years I was strapped to two pieces of wood which went from my armpits to my feet and was fixed to the bottom of the bed,” recalls Gallant. “We would overhear dogfights on the street and see the flames rise on the southern horizon when Southampton and Portsmouth were being blitzed.”

Encouraged by his mother to read the daily News Chronicle paper while confined to his bed, Gallant would keep his mind active reading about the war and international affairs. A school teacher would also visit twice a day for an hour and “stop us forgetting what we already knew.”

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Academia to industry and back again

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Eric Betzig, one of three chemistry Nobel laureates from 2014, shares what he learned from working in both academia and industry, and how he applies it to his career now.


Naturejobs-podcast
It’s often said that being a science graduate is a great thing: it opens so many doors and gives you the chance to take on any career. Although this might be true, it also makes deciding what career to focus on, and train for, very difficult.

This month, Nature Careers published a great piece based on the 2015 Nature Graduate Student Survey, where Nature tried to uncover what careers early career researchers were hoping to get, and how they were preparing themselves. In this podcast I was joined by Monya Baker, one of the Nature Careers editors, to give us some further insight into the survey.

The second part of the podcast is an interview I did with Eric Betzig, one of the three chemistry Nobel prize winners in 2014. In our chat we talk about his work in breaking the diffraction limit, what it’s like to see living cells move and his transitions from academia to industry and back again.