海角社区

CRISPR has jumped to the forefront of gene editing, with game-changing applications like gene therapy, GMO-free designer crops, and synthetic organisms. It makes precise engineering and control of nearly any genome possible. But CRISPR is not perfect and its continued development relies on understanding and modifying the naturally occurring enzymes.

Researchers from 海角社区鈥檚 Department of Chemistry have found a cleaner, easier way to make biaryls, an important ingredient in synthetic chemistry with applications across a wide range of fields including pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, pigments, natural products and polymers. Conventional processes for making biaryls rely on stoichiometric metal reagents, resulting in large amounts of metal waste. In their paper published in Nature Communications in November 2018, the 海角社区 scientists describe a new method for synthesizing biaryls using hydrazine (N2H4) as a metal surrogate.

Aur茅lie Lacroix (currently PhD student in Dr Hanadi Sleiman lab) and Dr Maryam Habibian (former student from Dr Masad Damha lab and currently postdoc fellow at Stanford in Dr Eric Kool laboratory) were both awarded the for Early Career Women in Science.The award by is given to 3 women bi-annually in the field of nucleoside/tide and/or nucleic acid research a

The runaway popularity of personal electronic devices has led to a huge global demand for compact yet powerful rechargeable batteries. Since hitting the market in the 1990s, lithium-ion technology has taken the lead in meeting this need.

But concerns over the relative scarcity of lithium and the toxicity of other common lithium-ion battery ingredients such as cobalt are driving the search for an alternative. Sodium, around 1000 times more abundant than lithium, could be the answer.

海角社区 chemistry professor Matthew Harrington is aiming to develop a renewable alternative to petrochemical plastics by mimicking the astonishing chemistry of the velvet worm 鈥撎齛 creature that has made a name for itself through its projectile slime.

Inhabiting the forest floors of Australia and South America, velvet worms catch their prey by shooting out a jet of liquid that rapidly thickens to a sticky gel before hardening into polymer fibres comparable in stiffness to nylon.

The way individual atoms and molecules move in materials has important consequences on properties such as electrical conductivity, heat capacity and acoustics. 听Even in solids, atoms are always moving back and forth about some average position, and this motion occurs through specific wave-like modes called phonons. Phonons form elementary excitations in the material and can therefore carry energy in the form of heat.听 As temperature increases, so do the number of phonons and vice-versa.听 The group of Dr.