Researchers have revealed the synthetic pathway that the Chilean soapbark tree, Quillaja Saponaria, follows to make saponins. They did it by installing genes for the pathway enzymes into a tobacco relative, Nicotiana benthamiana, to generate soapbark compounds in leaves. The effort was undertaken because some saponins – triterpene glycosides – are essential to some of […]

A new method has been developed to deliver vaccines and biologics in a powdered form by encasing it in a metal–organic framework (MOF). This encapsulation also has the advantage that it stabilises pharmaceuticals meaning that no refrigeration is needed for drugs like vaccines. Researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas presented their work on […]

The UK government needs to take key policy decisions to kickstart investment in hydrogen and lay out how it plans to have 10GW of hydrogen production capacity by 2030, according to the country’s first government-appointed hydrogen champion. In her report, Jane Toogood calls for industry and government to work together to build a hydrogen economy […]

There are only a few surface force balances in the world, and Susan Perkin’s group has one of them. ‘You can’t go and buy one,’ explains Perkin. Staff in the mechanical and electronic workshop in the University of Oxford’s chemistry department make all the components for the instrument Perkin works with. Full screen in popup […]

It’s certainly been a busy month for UK research. There’s been the budget and the first outline of the plans for the new Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). This was joined by the Nurse review of R&D that has been in the pipeline for two years. And the news that the UK and […]

Samples collected from an asteroid have been found to contain organic molecules, including uracil, a building block of RNA. This suggests that the chemicals that kickstarted life on Earth could have been delivered on meteorites. A remarkable Japanese mission to the asteroid Ryugu in 2020 returned 5.4g of material for lab analysis, free of earthly […]

In case you hadn’t noticed there is a four-weekly cycle of blog posts here at the Renaissance Mathematicus. Week one is a new series post, week two a fairly random #histSTM post, week three the next new series post, and week four a book review. Sometimes I throw in a random HISTSCI_HULK post just because. […]

A researcher at Indiana University in the US, who just received a degree in music composition and chemistry, has turned elements’ spectra into haunting music. W Walker Smith has built computer code to convert each element’s spectrum into a mixture of notes. He hopes that transforming the light into sound will make it easier to […]

The US state of New Jersey has sued Dow Chemical and other companies, of which several are unnamed, alleging that they have significantly contaminated the state and its drinking water with the 1,4-dioxane. The lawsuit claims that the firms sold the suspected human carcinogen knowing that it would ‘significantly pollute drinking water supplies, render drinking […]

The legal team of Charles Lieber, the former chair of Harvard University’s chemistry department who was convicted in December 2021 of failing to disclose funding from China, has had his sentencing date postponed once more. Lieber’s sentencing date is now 13 April, and he faces up to 26 years in prison and $1.2 million (£982,000) […]