All posts tagged: Molecules

Molecules found in Martian rock hint at ancient life – new study

Molecules found in Martian rock hint at ancient life – new study

Published by skeptic

A new study of carbon-based molecules in a Martian rock offers new hints about the possibility that the red planet once hosted life. The researchers considered a range of possible processes that could have produced the molecules they found. They argue that high concentrations of large organic (carbon-based) compounds found in the rock cannot be fully explained by the non-biological processes they examined. The team members say it is therefore possible that the organics were produced by living organisms. It is also feasible that molecules made by hydrothermal processes – where water is heated to high temperatures underground – also contributed to the organics found in the rock. The scientists also believe that some of the organic compounds came from fatty acids, which are found in the cell walls of living organisms. The complexity of the newly detected molecules is strikingly distinct. They require more complex methods for production, which helps scientists narrow down their source. The discovery of the molecules was made with Nasa’s Curiosity rover, which examined a Martian rock named Cumberland. This …

How teaching molecules to think is revealing what a ‘mind’ really is

How teaching molecules to think is revealing what a ‘mind’ really is

Published by skeptic

We all struggle with self-control sometimes. We tell ourselves only one more piece of chocolate, one more glass of wine, one more episode of a binge-worthy series before bed, but then carry on regardless. But who, or what, even is this “self” engaging in this push and pull, before giving in to temptation? The cells in our gut somehow collaborate with those in our brain and hands to reach for the chocolate bar, the wine bottle or the “next episode” button. And, with ever-increasing complexity, at some point a line is crossed, and the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts. That is to say, a self – the entity which acts in the world in ways that serve your goals and desires – emerges.  What if, though, “selves” are present in those very cells, ahead of the point at which they merge to form a greater whole? It might sound outlandish, but biological simulations are indicating that those minuscule units of life, which we usually think about as passive machines – cogs blindly …

JWST finds a surprise flood of organic molecules in a hidden galaxy

JWST finds a surprise flood of organic molecules in a hidden galaxy

Published by Jenni Sidey

Deep inside a nearby galaxy, a black hole sits behind a thick wall of dust. Almost all its light gets trapped. Yet the chemistry inside that buried core still leaves tracks you can read, if you look in the right kind of light. That is what a new study in Nature Astronomy delivers. The work was led by the Center for Astrobiology (CAB), CSIC-INTA, with key modeling techniques developed by researchers at the University of Oxford. Lead author Dr. Ismael García Bernete, formerly at Oxford and now at CAB, worked with Oxford physicist Professor Dimitra Rigopoulou and a wider team spanning Spain and the U.K. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, the scientists aimed at IRAS 07251–0248, an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy. Its eastern nucleus is so dust-choked that visible light and even X-rays struggle to escape. Infrared light can slip through better, letting you probe places that once looked like blank spots. James Webb Space Telescope Near-infrared Camera (JWST NIRCam) false colour image of IRAS07251-0248, made by combining exposures with the 2 mm (Blue), 2.77 …

Largest sulfur-bearing molecule ever found in space links interstellar chemistry to life

Largest sulfur-bearing molecule ever found in space links interstellar chemistry to life

Published by Jenni Sidey

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and the Centro de Astrobiología, part of Spain’s CSIC-INTA, have identified the largest sulfur-bearing molecule ever confirmed in interstellar space. The discovery fills a long-standing gap in astrochemistry and strengthens the link between space chemistry and the origins of life. The molecule, called 2,5-cyclohexadiene-1-thione, has 13 atoms arranged in a stable six-membered ring. It was detected inside a dense molecular cloud near the center of the Milky Way, about 27,000 light-years from Earth. Until now, sulfur compounds found in space were much smaller, usually fewer than six atoms. “This is the first unambiguous detection of a complex, ring-shaped sulfur-containing molecule in interstellar space and a crucial step toward understanding the chemical link between space and the building blocks of life,” said Mitsunori Araki, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute and lead author of the study. The cloud, known as G+0.693-0.027, sits near the Galactic Center and has become a hotspot for complex molecule discoveries. It contains no stars, yet it shows surprisingly rich …

Click chemistry is a revolutionary way to make molecules: Best ideas of the century

Click chemistry is a revolutionary way to make molecules: Best ideas of the century

Published by skeptic

Chemistry can be a messy, sluggish business, frequently involving cocktails of chemicals in round-bottomed flasks that must later be painstakingly separated. But in 2001, K. Barry Sharpless and his colleagues outlined an idea they called click chemistry that broke the mould. The snappy name, which was Sharpless’s wife Janet Dueser’s idea, summed it up well: a new set of reactions that worked quickly, cleanly and consistently. If it seems like a simple idea, it is – and therein lies its brilliance. Sharpless and his colleagues Hartmuth C. Kolb and M. G. Finn described their new reactions as “spring-loaded”. The idea was that you could apply them to a plethora of different starting chemicals, snapping them together almost like Lego bricks, and so quickly build a huge range of new and useful molecules – it was medicines that Sharpless mostly had in mind. The unifying thought behind these reactions was that they shied away from forming carbon-carbon bonds, as was the orthodoxy among chemists at the time, and instead formed bonds between carbon and what chemists call “heteroatoms”, principally oxygen and nitrogen. …

Scientists trace a pathway from gut microorganisms to neuropsychiatric disorders via fat molecules

Scientists trace a pathway from gut microorganisms to neuropsychiatric disorders via fat molecules

Published by José Betancourt

New genetic research has identified a direct causal chain connecting the microorganisms in the human digestive tract to the risk of developing severe psychiatric and neurodegenerative conditions. The findings suggest that specific gut bacteria influence the development of disorders such as depression and Alzheimer’s disease by altering the levels of fat molecules in the blood. This discovery provides a potential biological roadmap for how the digestive system communicates with the brain. The study was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders. The human gut hosts a vast community of microorganisms known as the microbiota. This ecosystem performs essential functions ranging from digestion to immune system regulation. Biologists describe the communication network between this community and the central nervous system as the gut-brain axis. Previous observational research has frequently noted that patients with brain disorders tend to host different bacterial colonies compared to healthy individuals. However, these earlier observations could not determine the direction of the effect. It remained unclear whether specific bacteria caused the disease or if the disease itself altered the gut environment. Biological …

Scientists use atomic switches to reliably connect individual molecules to electrodes

Scientists use atomic switches to reliably connect individual molecules to electrodes

Published by Jenni Sidey

Electronics keep shrinking, but silicon is starting to run into physical limits. To go smaller, researchers are turning to something far tinier than any transistor on a chip: single molecules that act as circuit elements in their own right. One of the biggest roadblocks has been surprisingly simple to state and very hard to solve. How do you make a clean, stable electrical connection between a single molecule and metal electrodes so those tiny parts can work together as a real circuit for you to use? Cracking the Wiring Problem At the Molecular Scale A team in Japan has now taken a major step toward that goal. Researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo and partner institutes have built silver based atomic switches that can reliably connect individual molecules to electrodes in a solid device. Their work shows how to build and break metal filaments one atom thick, then let a single molecule slip into that gap and carry current. This sounds abstract, but the goal is concrete. If engineers can wire up molecules in …