chemical reactions tagged posts

Carbon-hydrogen bonds in hydrocarbon molecules have resisted functionalization until now...

A team of researchers from the University of Minnesota and University of Massachusetts Amherst has discovered new technology that can speed up chemical reactions 10,000 times faster than the current reaction rate limit. These findings could increase the speed and lower the cost of thousands of chemical processes used in developing fertilizers, foods, fuels, plastics, and more.

In chemical reactions, scientists use what are called catalysts to speed reactions...

Verrucosispora maris, the bacteria in which the enzyme was found. Credit: P. Race

Scientists at the Universities of Bristol and Newcastle have uncovered the secret of the ‘Mona Lisa of chemical reactions’ – in a bacterium that lives at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It is hoped the discovery could lead to the development of new antibiotics and other medical treatments. The Diels-Alder reaction, discovered by Nobel Prize-wining chemists Otto Diels and Kurt Alder, is one of the most powerful chemical reactions known, and is used extensively by synthetic chemists to produce many important molecules, including antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs and agrochemicals.

However, there has been much debate and controversy about whether nature uses the reaction to produce its own useful molecules...