Over the past five years or so we've seen some important breakthroughs demonstrating how enzymes can be used to break down common plastics, such as the PET used for everything from drink bottles to ...

Chemists' technique for turning cheap dicarboxylic acids into complex lactones could boost industries from pharmaceuticals to plastics. Chemists at Scripps Research have unveiled a method for turning ...

The Bochum-based researchers produced anionic ketenes that were so stable that they could be isolated. Unlike previous methods, which can produce higher-value compounds from simple molecules, this ...

Highly complex neurodegenerative diseases could be treated by surprisingly simple molecular reagents. The brains of people with disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease are afflicted by a toxic cocktail, ...

A common mineral, α-alumina, found abundantly in Earth's crust, may have played a critical role in initiating the chemical reactions necessary for life to begin. This exciting discovery, detailed in a ...

Three researchers won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for their discovery of methods to “click” molecular building blocks together, forming complex molecules that can be used to develop ...

A rotating cylinder with its side cut away to expose the core, showing patches of purple, blue, green, yellow, and orange that are dense in the middle and more diffuse toward the edges. This rotating ...

In a series of recent animal studies, a handful of deceptively simple molecules have done something that once sounded like science fiction: they have restored memory and reversed biological signs of ...