Monthly Archives: August 2007

ACS: Analyse this

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I’m an organic chemist at heart, but for this meeting I’ve decided to explore beyond the wonders of total synthesis. So this morning, I attended one of the analytical chemistry sessions – and it was fascinating.

I opted for a session on metabolomics. For those of you who think this sounds like a rude word, let me tell you that it’s the study of metabolites as markers for disease (or at least that’s one application; it’s impossible to do justice to the full range of possibilities in one blog entry).

The session began with a talk by Lily Tong, from Greg Stephanopoulous’ lab. They were able to identify metabolites that are upregulated in patients that die of kidney failure. In this way, they were able to devise an accurate model to predict patients at most risk from the disease. Impressive stuff.

Rima Kaddurah-Daouk described a study of plasma taken from people with schizophrenia, and showed that each of three commonly-used antipsychotic drugs produces its own pattern of lipid-metabolite perturbation. This provides further evidence of the so-called ‘lipid hypothesis’ of schizophrenia, which suggests that the disease is not just caused by disturbances to neurotransmitters.

And finally, the award for gross presentation of the day goes to Andy Ewing, who is using fruitflies as models to study the effects of alcohol intoxication and dependence. This involves harvesting fruitflies’ heads, and we were treated to some lovely pictures of his special fruitfly-head masher in action.

It’s been a while since I looked at how metabolomics is progressing, and I was impressed at how far the field has come over the last few years. And now that I know fruitflies get drunk, I’ll never look at them the same way again.

Andy

Andy Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

ACS: Hydrogen hiccups

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I recently wrote a feature about storing hydrogen gas in incredibly porous materials (shameless bit of self promotion there, but one needs to keep the fans happy). But now I’m wondering whether I got it all wrong – a talk today by Bob Crabtree raised an interesting point – the motoring industry has an infrastructure that is all set up to revolve around liquid fuels, so why go after hydrogen as a fuel if one keeps it in the gaseous state?

Crabtree has a strategy to store hydrogen as a liquid, by using organic liquids that have readily-releasable hydrogen. In this case he has studied, both experimentally and computationally, nitrogen-containing cyclic molecules. The amount of nitrogen present can be changed so that the temperature at which hydrogen can be released is also changeable. There is much to say on this topic, I feel… but for now I must run – the monster-sized poster session is happening this evening and I’m hoping for a bit of excitement.

ACS: Poets corner

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I think I’ve just encountered the highlight of my visit – a poetry reading by Nobel prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann.

Coincidentally, I’ve been thinking a lot about poetry lately, and how a poet can convey their thoughts. I am not brave enough to attempt to write anything other than a jaunty limerick myself, so I have a good deal of admiration for anyone who can convey a complex thought in an abstract, but senseful way.

And Hoffmann just spent an hour in the middle of a busy, bustling exhibition hall, packed full of people trying to sell mass spectrometers and the like, with a crowd of people captivated by his poems that cross from hard-core science to his childhood experience growing up in Poland during the war, to more philosphical matters. Check out the next issue of Nature’s chemistry podcast, when it hits your ears in a few weeks to hear more.

ACS: Going the distance

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Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.

This Douglas Adams quote was one of the first things that popped into my head when I entered the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Simply put, the building is huge: “516,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space” with “3 exhibition halls each ranging in size from 162,000 to 184,000 square feet.”

After looking at the floorplan, I realized that it would be pretty tough to rapidly hop from session to session – the convention center has two skybridges that you need to use if you’re moving from the west side of the building to the east side of the building, so it can take 10 to 15 minutes to get from one session to another. This must be why the refrigerator in the press office was packed full of bottles of Gatorade/Powerade…

The first day of the ACS was great (more about the science in my next post), but I’ve yet to find a good place to grab coffee that doesn’t have a huge line at all hours of the day – on my way to the afternoon session I saw people crowded around a table containing snacks and coffee. Alas, the giant drum of coffee was decaf! I saw another table further down the corridor, but it too contained only decaf coffee. Oh cruel world, why must you mock me so?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

ACS: It’s better to travel…

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People often say to me that travelling must be one of the perks of the job, but, oh boy, there are times when I beg to differ. I tried so hard to check-in online, but the British Airways system kept chucking me out. So I tried to use the electronic check-in kiosks at Heathrow airport, but after queuing for 30 minutes, the machine refused to give me a boarding pass. I was told to join a nearby queue for the actual check-in desks, where I waited for an hour, before being told that, actually, it was the wrong queue.

When I eventually got my boarding pass, I then had to stand in front of an x-ray machine in security, striking different poses (turn to the left, hands in the air, turn to the right, hands down…) I know security is important in these troubled times, but I couldn’t help thinking that they were just making me dance the Timewarp in slow motion, and taking pictures of me in my underwear with their x-ray camera. I imagine the images will be on YouTube by now.

The plane was late, and once we’d boarded, we were told we’d have to wait for an hour for a take-off slot. Eventually we trundled to the runway, whereupon the plane immediately turned around and went back to the gate, because a passenger had taken ill. The stricken passenger was removed, and we had to wait for his luggage to be located in the hold and removed. Then the plane had to be re-fuelled, and we waited for another take-off slot. After three hours on the plane, we finally took off.

It could have been worse; some of my friends from the Royal Society of Chemistry had their flight to Boston cancelled. And at least I didn’t have to watch any films about penguins this time.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest – on with the ACS meeting…

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

ACS: Here I go again

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Well, the fall ACS meeting is nearly here – a few NPG editors will be attending the meeting (including myself), so don’t forget to check back for daily updates…

I also wanted to mention that we’ve put together another special issue of Nature that will be distributed at the meeting – in this week’s issue, there’s a News Feature on metal-organic frameworks and several papers:

– Structure-based activity prediction for an enzyme of unknown function by Hermann et al. (click here for the News & Views)

– Vitrification of a monatomic metallic liquid by Bhat et al. (click here for the News & Views)

– A transglutaminase homologue as a condensation catalyst in antibiotic assembly lines by Fortin et al. (click here for the News & Views)

– Selection and evolution of enzymes from a partially randomized non-catalytic scaffold by Seelig & Szostak (click here for the News & Views)

If you’re going to be at the meeting, don’t forget to swing by the NPG booth (booth #434) to pick up free issues of Nature, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Materials, Nature Methods, Nature Nanotechnology, and Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.

And last (but certainly not least), Paul thinks we should meet for “[d]rinks or dinner at a neutral location” – depending on where and when it is, I’ll try to swing by (and bring along a few of the other editors…) Hope to see you there!

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Reactions – S. Thayumanavan

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1. What made you want to be a chemist?

When I was in high school in India, I wanted to be a physicist. Because, I thought, physics is logical. But, I did not score that well in physics in my high school finals. In the college that I was interested in attending, the faculty were more interested in admitting me in chemistry, because I scored very high in chemistry. I was okay with it, because of the possibility of doing physical chemistry. During the process, I had to take organic chemistry. I had a couple of great O-Chem teachers and I fell in love with the subject. I also recognized that this subject is likely to have a greater impact in people’s lives than any other. Therefore, I decided to pursue research in organic chemistry as my career.

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

A business consultant. When I was interviewing for my jobs, a friend of mine at Caltech dragged me to a presentation by a business consulting company. This friend then convinced me to apply for an interview. I did not even know how stocks and bonds worked (I still don’t!). When I went through the interview process, I thought the exercise was very interesting. However, I did not pursue this much, because I did not think that I would be happy with it in the long-run.

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

I think we owe it to the world to pick a problem that is of true societal interest. The current system leads us in to a mode of being a bit publication-crazy!! This is unfortunate!

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

President Abdul Kalam, the past President of India. When I visited India during his presidency, I realized that he was the most influential president that modern India had. He truly transcended all the barriers that humans seem to build around them. Here is a Muslim man, who is a scientist, in a Hindu-majority country just captured the hearts of everyone. Most of the country wanted him to continue as a president. He walked away from it without regrets mentioning that he would like to spend time teaching.

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

Five years ago! I did a simple alkylation experiment to build a dendrimer; did not purify the molecule myself. Handed it over to my postdoctoral associate who was working on the project.

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

ArdhaShastra – Indian classic – never read it so far, always wanted to!

mp3 CD with the maximum number of classical songs in my native language, Tamil.

S. Thayumanavan (Thai) is in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and works on the design and synthesis of macromolecules of interest at the interface of chemistry with materials science and biology.

North by Northwestern

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Although it could be argued that the most controversial summer signing is that of a certain Argentine footballer – who moved north from a smallish team in east London to the greatest football club on the planet – it may not be the most significant.

Northwestern University, recently dubbed ‘Nano U’, has also been dabbling in the transfer market this summer (not for footballers, however) and has recruited Fraser Stoddart, currently a professor of chemistry at UCLA and the director of the California NanoSystems Institute.

Obviously, Chicago is his kind of town…

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Nobelium – No!

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Controversies about the preparation of heavy elements are nothing new. While browsing through a 50-year-old issue of Nature, I came across a report describing the preparation of element-102 (Nature subscribers can see the report here). This described a multinational effort performed at The Nobel Institute of Physics, Stockholm, in which curium atoms were fused with carbon-13 atoms. The new element was named ‘Nobelium’ in honour of its place of birth.

Unfortunately, they were wrong. A year later, in 1958, the physicist Albert Ghiorso and his colleagues at Berkeley unambiguously identified nobelium-254 (the product of bombarding curium with carbon-12). They decided to retain the name of the new element – otherwise I suppose it might have become ‘Ghiorsium’, which somehow isn’t quite the same.

Speaking of dubious elements, I also recently stumbled across a spoof version of the periodic table (it comes in three parts: click here, here and here to see each section), which is worth a look if you fancy a break from the bench. This came from a BBC TV programme called ‘Look Around You’, which made fun of school science programmes from the 1970s. The rest of the web site is worth a look too – there are a few quizzes you can do, including one on iron. The answer to the question “The human body contains enough iron to make what?” was particularly illuminating.

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)