Monthly Archives: June 2007

Chemical biology, au naturale?

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Hi all,

It’s the one time of the month when you can count on me for a blog entry… our next issue has gone live. This July is our third official focus issue, and we’re talking all about natural products, and particularly my favorite class of biomolecules, the terpenes. The issue is free for about a month, so check it out!

This was a pretty fun issue for me as, among other things, I got to go to Germany and chat with some folks at the Hans Knoell Institute working on all things natural products. In chatting with some other scientists (and Maggie Smallwood in particular) at a subsequent terpene meeting (Terpnet), I discovered that there are still some strange differences in the ways that the general public perceives and regulates metabolic engineering, which you may see reflected in our editorial. We also got a look from Phil Baran and Tom Maimone into the most exciting methods for and significant achievements in terpene synthesis in the last decade.

One of the reasons that I am so fascinated by terpenes has to do with an advanced organic class I took in college. The professor, Seiichi Matsuda, gave us a handout of 88 terpene structures. It was then our responsibility to figure out how to form all these different structures from oxidosqualene just by varying the path of cyclization or the subsequent proton and methyl shifts. The idea that there were enzymes that could control all of these different processes, ending up with only one product (or as a commentary in the issue suggests, a few more) pretty much blew my mind at the time and biosynthesis has entertained me ever since.

Anyway, we hope you like the issue. And if you have any great ideas for upcoming focus issues, we’d love to hear them!

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

Respect

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I was chatting to an old friend recently, who used to work as a research chemist for a multinational company – until she lost her job as part of a downsizing campaign. She now works for a much smaller biotech business. I knew that she had taken a while to settle down, so I asked if she’d like to go back to another global corporation.

“No way,” she said, “those companies don’t want or respect people of my age.” She’s in her mid-forties. To my mind that’s young, but she pointed out that none of her downsized colleagues of a similar age (or older) secured jobs in global companies. Yet they were snapped up by smaller businesses.

So why the apparent difference in attitude between small and big business? It seems that the smaller companies were flexible enough to make room for more experienced chemists, whereas the bigger companies, despite their greater wealth and relative security, were not. Instead, the multinationals grabbed the younger people – who were certainly highly employable, but who had lower salary expectations.

So which businesses have the right strategy? I think it might be the smaller ones. Although they’re paying more for the experienced staff than they would have done for the younger people, they expect to get a lot of bang for their bucks. If you ask me, those multinationals don’t know what they’re missing.

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

Reactions – Joshua Finkelstein

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[In lieu of profiles, the contributors to this blog have decided to do their own Reactions pieces…]

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I was a bit of a ‘late bloomer’ when it came to chemistry: I didn’t own a chemistry set when I was growing up or run reactions in my garage. And I didn’t really enjoy high school chemistry classes (though I liked that feeling you get after successfully balancing a complex chemical reaction…) But I had an amazing AP chemistry teacher in high school, so I went into college with an open mind. When I got there, I was drawn to organic and biological chemistry: I thought it was so cool that a chemist could (design and) synthesize a biologically-active organic molecule that could be used to tease apart a complex cellular process or could be developed into a drug.

2. If you weren’t a chemist/Nature Editor and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

Like Andy, I probably would have been a musician – I play drums, jazz piano, various percussion instruments, and sing a bit. (I’m trying to learn how to play guitar, but don’t think my fingers are the right length/shape – or maybe I just need to practice more?) I played in a few bands in graduate school (which really helped keep my spirits up when my chemistry wasn’t working), and I miss the feeling you get when you’re playing music with close friends in a dirty/dusty basement…

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

The simple answer is to work on an important scientific problem that isn’t being adequately addressed by other chemists – easier said than done, though… I guess an important question to constantly ask is “why am I doing this experiment/project?” As long as you know the answer to that question, then you are probably “contributing to the world at large” – if you can’t think of a good/satisfying answer, maybe it’s time to change projects?

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

If I had to choose a scientist, I’d probably invite Linus Pauling or RB Woodward to dinner – I’d be interested in hearing what they think about all the things scientists have discovered in the last few decades. If I could choose any historical figure, I think I’d invite Oscar Wilde or John Coltrane – I imagine Wilde would be hilarious in person and I’d love to hear Coltrane talk about music and tell stories about the jazz scene in the 50s and 60s…

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

Several years ago – I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it involved DNA glycosylases…

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

I think I’d want to bring something I’d read before/knew I liked – so I’d probably go with Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina or Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. As for music, I don’t think I could survive if I only had a single CD – does a mix CD count? If so, I’d burn one that had the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, Dizzy Gillespie’s A Night in Tunisia, Beck’s Tropicalia, Life In A Glass House from Radiohead’s Amnesiac and/or Morning Bell from Radiohead’s Kid A, Stevie Wonder’s Superstition, and a few other tracks… (Thank goodness for iPods…)

Joshua Finkelstein is a Senior Editor for Nature and a regular contributor to the Sceptical Chymist.

A knight’s tale

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I was privileged to find myself having dinner with chemistry’s newest Knight Bachelor (Sir Fraser Stoddart) at the Ritz Hotel last night, where we chatted about his visit to Buckingham Palace the day before – the bit where Her Majesty the Queen taps him on the shoulders with a sword. He recalled the sequence of events and the brief conversation he had with Her Majesty and has kindly agreed to share them with the readers of the Sceptical Chymist:

It all begins with Fraser being presented to Her Majesty by the Lord Chamberlain:

Lord Chamberlain: “May I present to Your Majesty, Professor Sir Fraser Stoddart, for services to chemistry and nanotology” (No, that last word is not misspelled!)

THE CEREMONY (the kneeling and sword bit)

Her Majesty: “He got that wrong, didn’t he?”

Sir Fraser: “He certainly did, Your Majesty.”

Her Majesty: “What should it be then, nanotechnology?”

Sir Fraser: “You’ve got it right, Ma’am”

Her Majesty: "It’s about very small things, isn’t it?

Sir Fraser: “Indeed, it’s about tiny things that are 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, Ma’am”

Her Majesty: “That’s exceedingly small. You work in America now, I’m told.”

Sir Fraser: “That’s so, Ma’am”

After approximately 18 seconds, apparently the average amount of time each person receiving an honour spends with Her Majesty, Fraser recalled that, “At this point, she extends her right hand, and I mine for she leaves me with no choice. A strong handshake is followed by a big approving smile from Her Majesty, and I am on my merry way.”

I normally try to end these posts with a witty comment, but this one speaks for itself..!

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Oh happy day

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Here I am having a whale of a time at the Fraser Stoddart 65th birthday celebrations. Celebrating a birthday with science; I like it. I like it a lot. The line up of speakers is incredibly impressive. These are all people I would want to hear talk at, say, a huge meeting like the ACS. But the beauty of this conference is that you don’t have to wade through 15000 abstracts to find the best speakers. They’re all here, undiluted.

I wrote a news story about the festivities, but was just too late to include one of the highlights of the conference – Chad Mirkin has used his dip-pen nanolithography technique to draw Fraser’s portrait in a one-molecule high layer of 16-mercaptohexadecanoic acid on a gold surface. Unfortunately I can’t post pictures here, but I will update later with a link to the pic. It’s well worth seeing.

UPDATE: The portrait is here

Reactions – Miguel Garcia-Garibay

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1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I was a beginning pharmacy-biology major in Mexico when, on a Saturday morning, a friend asked me to help him with work related to his natural products chemistry research. Following a manual, and with his help, I set up and ran a steam distillation extraction and analyzed fractions by TLC while he was doing something else. The whole process was so absorbing and entertaining that by the time I remembered that I had something to do that afternoon, it was already well into the night. About ten hours had gone by and I was having a lot of fun. That night I realized that chemistry research doesn’t feel like work (…and I hate work).

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

I would have been an archeologist. I like history, digging, classifying and solving puzzles.

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

There are many more questions and challenges in the world today than all chemists are capable of solving. We need to attract more talent and many more resources. While it is obvious that our society does not invest enough in the creation, preservation, and distribution of knowledge, we cannot expect poorly informed societies to make a significant investment in something they do not understand. In addition to having fun at work, we could take responsibility for not having the public engaged in all aspects of chemistry, and then do something about it.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Leonardo Da Vinci, because he may be the most amazing human being on record.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

About six years ago my research group started work in the area of crystalline molecular machines. The project seemed so risky that I did all the initial work. Eventually, several students took over and have done wonders with it. However, I run emission spectra under cryogenic conditions regularly. We have a 15 year old (but still very nice) setup and I am one of the few experts in my group.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

Any book worth reading multiple times will have to be poetry. I am a Pablo Neruda and Federico Garcia Lorca fan. For the CD, I’d bring a Mandarin language course. It would be the greatest irony that, with Spanish, English, and Mandarin I could speak to a significant fraction of the world’s population, yet there would be no one to talk to. Learning Chinese would be fun and it would take a while.

Miguel Garcia-Garibay is in an organic chemist in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles and works on the development of stereoselective solvent-free synthesis and on the design and testing of crystalline molecular machines.

Light up my life

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A bit of a stretch for a chemistry blog, perhaps, but I couldn’t resist sharing this lovely find. The designer Makoto Tojiki has created some stunning light sculptures with a little bit of science thrown in. Well worth a look if you get a chance as they’re really quite beautiful. Pi is cited to a large number of decimal places along the side of the glowing twisted tapes that make up the sculptures, and he’s called the design ‘Archimedes dream’, apparently because Archimedes was renowned for being a bit of a visionary and ahead of his time.

In some places on the web people are saying that these sculptures are made from organic light-emitting diodes (which is what first attracted my attention). After a closer look, however, this doesn’t seem to be the case. The electroluminescent (EL) tapes appear to be a copper wire threaded through a layer of phosphor, covered in a protective plastic sheath. I’ve never seen them before, though, and I can’t locate more information than that – does anyone know which kind of phosphor is used for them? They tapes are available in a range of colours and I can think of a number of uses for them, though to be fair, most of them involve me doing my own Tony Hart impression and trying to create something artistic out of them.

Vicki

Vicki Cleave (Senior Editor, Nature Materials)

Reactions – Andy Mitchinson

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[In lieu of profiles, the contributors to this blog have decided to do their own Reactions pieces, and first up is Andy…]

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I think what got me truly hooked was getting a chemistry set as a child. The very first experiment I did, I managed to blow up the reaction flask, which I’m now somewhat ashamed to admit I thought was pretty exciting. (Note to budding chemists: blowing up reaction flasks is not cool or clever).

2. If you weren’t a chemist/Nature Editor and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

In my spare time I sing with a choir – not as dull as it sounds, since we specialize in tongue-in-cheek arrangements of pop songs (which I compose) alongside the more serious stuff. So, if money was no concern, I’d like to train as a proper musician and try to make a career out of it.

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

By making useful things. I know a lot of chemists in the pharmaceutical industry who chose that career because they wanted to make something that could benefit society. Imagine being the chemist who made the first successful drug for Alzheimer’s disease – what a difference you’d have made.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

How about Henrietta Lacks, who gave the world the first immortalized cell line (the ubiquitous HeLa cells)? She never knew that her cells made such a huge contribution to medicine and biological research, and I’d love to know what she thought about it.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

About a year and a half ago, but I don’t recall what it was. I was an industrial synthetic organic chemist, and the company I worked for closed down my site, making about 350 people redundant. The experiment I was working on at the time didn’t stick in my mind, probably because I had other things to worry about.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

I’d go for a couple of peculiarly British options. The book would be Behind The Scenes At The Museum by Kate Atkinson, which is a tragicomic examination of family life, written mostly from a child’s point of view. The CD would be Tropical Brainstorm, the final album from the much-underrated singer/songwriter Kirsty MacColl. (But I’d also like to take my Massive Attack CDs, especially the Blue Lines album).

Andy Mitchinson is an Associate Editor for Nature and a regular contributor to the Sceptical Chymist.