News articles
Bitter pill now easier to swallow
For (young) children, swallowing large pills or capsules is difficult or even impossible. The Pediatric Praziquantel Consortium succeeded in developing a modified version of an existing Schistosomiasis drug that is also suitable for young children.
Stress-resistant algae
Plants have a lot to endure. Burning heat, extreme drought, hungry insects, destructive fungi and so on. Researchers in Göttingen have looked at the response to these stress factors in detail from algae and compared them to land plants.
Bringing hidden chirality to vibrational light.
When a molecule is cryptochiral, it is particularly difficult to determine its stereochemistry. Using vibrational circular dichroism, a group from Groningen has managed to crack this tough problem, as they report in Chemistry A European Journal.
Stem cell switch
A single molecular ‘switch’ seems sufficient to activate stem cells. This finding has the potential to significantly improve the efficacy and reliability of cell therapies and bone marrow transplants.
Electrons for green molecules
Two papers from a group in Amsterdam show insights in electrochemical pathways. ‘If you want to transfer these processes towards the industrial scale, you need to understand the pathway.’
Organic semiconductor emits spinning light for more efficient OLED screens
Researchers at TU Eindhoven and the University of Cambridge have created an organic semiconductor in which electrons move in a spiral pattern. The light emitted could make OLED screens in televisions and smartphones much more energy efficient.
Microwave recycling of bulletproof vests
Researchers have succeeded in recycling powdered aramid fibres using microwave radiation, according to a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Carnivore prefers bamboo
The dietary choice of giant pandas is a mystery to scientists because of their carnivorous gastrointestinal tract. The presence of bamboo microRNAs in the blood of pandas sheds new light on the exchange of microRNAs between plants and animals.
All tied up: germanene nanoribbons could be useful for quantum computers
Researchers from Twente and Utrecht have made strips of germanium atoms that are one atom thick and a few nanometres wide. The two-dimensional nanoribbons have properties that could be useful in future quantum computers.
Shedding light on off-targets
Using photoaffinity probes based on a motif found in kinase-targeting anticancer drugs, researchers from KU Leuven have shown that their off-targets are not only found in the kinase families, but also in other proteins. They have published their findings in Communications Chemistry.
Vici grants awarded
Dutch research funding organisation NWO selected 43 proposals for a Vici-grant. Among the laureates are four KNCV-members.
Borrowed hydrogen makes ‘green’ soap
Ben Feringa’s group has developed a simple, green method for attaching unprotected alcohols to amino acids, with only water as a by-product. All the possibilities are described in Chemistry A European Journal.
Natural and unnatural amino acids show synthetic synergy
A team from Groningen and Barcelona cleared up what takes place when you put a designer enzyme with unnatural amino acids through a directed evolution campaign, as shown in ACS Catalysis. ‘We didn’t anticipate this at all.’
Ticks owe their tenacity to glycine-rich proteins
Thanks to colloid chemistry, ticks can suck our blood at their leisure. By chance, two groups from Maastricht and Wageningen were the first to shed light on this, as they report in Nature Chemistry.
An X-ray lens on catalysts
Researchers in Ghent have found a method to determine the temperature of a catalyst very locally during a reaction, as reported in Nature Catalysis. Their work offers a new fundamental view of catalytic reactions.
Tiny tin
A spectacular image of an electrocatalyst that exhibits spectacular behaviour. During CO2 reduction, this combination of tin particles on a nanotextured carbon support manages to improve its performance. The secret: particle breakdown.
Drug probe fishes for off-targets
Attaching a biotin tail to a cancer drug makes it possible to see very specifically which proteins the drug targets in lysed cancer cells, as a Dutch team shows in ChemBioChem.
Washing your laundry in hydrochloric acid
Researchers in Amsterdam, together with technology company Avantium, have developed a process to extract glucose from polycotton and recycle the remaining polyester. It is already working on a pilot scale, Nature Communications reports.
Stereospecific superglue
Simple molecules can be used to make a biodegradable glue that is stronger than current petroleum-based mass products. And it does not have to be much more expensive, write US researchers in Science.
Ephemeral active sites form super acid
Research into plastic recycling with sulphated zirconium oxide took an interesting fundamental turn when a team of Dutch and American chemists found signs of transient superacidity, as reported in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
