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Category: chemistry

Medications change our gut microbiome in predictable ways

The bacteria in our poop are a reasonable representation of what’s living in our digestive system. To understand how different drugs can impact the gut microbiome, the team cultured microbial communities from nine donor fecal samples and systematically tested them with 707 different clinically relevant drugs.

The researchers examined changes in the growth of different bacterial species, the community composition, and the metabolome – the mix of small molecules called metabolites that microbes produce and consume. They found that 141 drugs altered the microbiome of the samples and even short-term treatments created enduring changes, entirely wiping out some microbial species. The primary force behind how the community responds to drug inhibition was competition over nutrients.

“The winners and losers among our gut bacteria can often be predicted by understanding how sensitive they are to the medications and how they compete for food,” said the first author on the paper. “In other words, drugs don’t just kill bacteria; they also reshuffle the ‘buffet’ in our gut, and that reshuffling shapes which bacteria win.”

Despite the complexity of the bacterial communities, the researchers were able to create data-driven computer models that accurately predicted how they would respond to a particular drug. They factored in the sensitivity of different bacterial species to that drug and the competitive landscape – essentially, who was competing with whom for which nutrients.

Their work provides a framework for predicting how a person’s microbial community might change with a given drug, and could help scientists find ways to prevent these changes or more easily restore a healthy gut microbiome in the future.

Our gut microbiome is made up of trillions of bacteria and other microbes living in our intestines. These help our bodies break down food, assist our immune system, send chemical signals to our brain, and potentially serve many other functions that researchers are still working to understand. When the microbiome is out of balance – with not enough helpful bacteria or the wrong combination of microbes – it can affect our whole body.

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Like living cells, oil-in-water droplets form ‘arms’ in response to their environment

Oil-in-water droplets respond to chemical cues by forming arm-like extensions that resemble filopodia, which are used by living cells to sense and explore their environment.

A research team led by chemists at Penn State studies the droplets to glimpse how matter may have transitioned to life billions of years ago. The researchers have dissected the mechanism through which these arms form and shown that they respond directionally, growing toward or away from specific chemicals.

The research appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and will be featured on the front cover of an upcoming issue. The society also featured the research in its Research Headlines video series, which spotlights new and interesting work published in the society’s journals.

Mini-vortices in nanopores accelerate ion transport for faster supercapacitor charging

Tiny cavities in energy storage devices form small vortices that help with charging, according to a research team led by TU Darmstadt. This previously unknown phenomenon could advance the development of faster storage devices.

Solar and wind are the energy sources of the future, but they are subject to significant natural fluctuations. Storage solutions are therefore particularly important for a successful energy transition. Rechargeable batteries achieve very high energy densities by storing energy chemically. However, this high energy density comes at the price of long charging times and a dependence on precious raw materials such as cobalt.

In contrast to rechargeable batteries, so-called supercapacitors store energy in electric double layers: a voltage is applied between two electrodes. They are immersed in a liquid in which tiny charged particles, ions, float. The positive and negative ions move in opposite directions and accumulate in charged, nanometer-thick layers, the electric double layers, on the surfaces of the electrodes. In order to provide as much surface area as possible for the accumulation of ions, supercapacitors use porous electrodes that have many tiny pores, like a sponge.

Durable catalyst shields itself for affordable green hydrogen production

An international research team led by Professor Philip C.Y. Chow at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) has unveiled a new catalyst that overcomes a major challenge in producing green hydrogen at scale. This innovation makes the process of producing oxygen efficiently and reliably in the harsh acidic environment used by today’s most promising industrial electrolyzers.

Spearheaded by Ci Lin, a Ph.D. student in HKU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, the team’s work was published in ACS Energy Letters.

Green hydrogen is seen as a clean fuel that can help reduce carbon emissions across industries like steelmaking, chemical production, long-distance transportation, and seasonal energy storage. Proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers are preferred for their compact design and rapid response, but they operate in acidic conditions that are exceptionally demanding on the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalyst.

Imaging Uncovers Hidden Structures in Exploding Stars

“Novae are more than fireworks in our galaxy — they are laboratories for extreme physics,” said Dr. Laura Chomiuk.

What can imaging supernovae (plural for supernova) explosions teach astronomers about their behavior and physical characteristics? This is what a recent study published in Nature Astronomy hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated the mechanisms behind the thermonuclear eruptions that supernovae cause. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand supernovae, as they are hypothesized to be responsible for spreading the chemical elements and molecules needed for life throughout the universe.

For the study, the researchers used the Georgia State University CHARA Array to observe exploding supernovae from two separate white dwarfs: nova V1674 Her and nova V1405 Cas, which are located approximately 16,200 and 5,500 light-years from Earth, and were observed days 2 & 3 and days 53, 55, & 67 after first light of eruption, also known as t0, respectively. For nova V1674 Her, the researchers observed outflows during days 2 & 3, while they observed this same behavior for nova V1405 Cas during days 53, 55, & 67. The researchers note these contrasting observations challenge longstanding hypotheses regarding supernovae behavior during their eruption periods.

Lung Cancer Risk Factors

Cigarette smoking is the number one risk factor for lung cancer. In the United States, cigarette smoking is linked to about 80% to 90% of lung cancer deaths. Using other tobacco products such as cigars or pipes also increases the risk for lung cancer. Tobacco smoke is a toxic mix of more than 7,000 chemicals. Many are poisons. At least 70 are known to cause cancer in people or animals.

People who smoke cigarettes are 15 to 30 times more likely to get lung cancer or die from lung cancer than people who do not smoke. Even smoking a few cigarettes a day or smoking occasionally increases the risk of lung cancer. The more years a person smokes and the more cigarettes smoked each day, the more risk goes up.

People who quit smoking have a lower risk of lung cancer than if they had continued to smoke, but their risk is higher than the risk for people who never smoked. Quitting smoking at any age can lower the risk of lung cancer.

Blue jean dye could make batteries greener

Sustainability is often described in shades of green, but the future of clean energy may also carry a hint of deep blue. Electric vehicles and energy storage systems could soon draw power from a familiar pigment found in denim.

Concordia researchers have found that indigo, the natural dye used to color fabrics for centuries, can help shape the future of safe and sustainable batteries. In a study published in Nature Communications, the team revealed that the common substance supports two essential reactions inside a solid-state battery at the same time. This behavior helps the battery hold more energy, cycle reliably and perform well even in cold conditions.

“We were excited to see that a natural molecule could guide the battery chemistry instead of disrupting it,” says Xia Li, the study’s lead author and associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering. “Indigo helps the battery work in a very steady and predictable way. That is important if we want greener materials to play a role in future energy systems.”

Sum-frequency microscope can image an invisible 2D material

Researchers from the Physical Chemistry and Theory departments at the Fritz Haber Institute have found a new way to image layers of boron nitride that are only a single atom thick. This material is usually nearly invisible in optical microscopes because it has no optical resonances.

Electrons stay put in layers of mismatched ‘quantum Legos’

Electrons can be elusive, but Cornell researchers using a new computational method can now account for where they go—or don’t go—in certain layered materials.

Physics and engineering researchers have confirmed that in certain quantum materials, known as “misfits” because their crystal structures don’t align perfectly—picture LEGOs where one layer has a square grid and the other a hexagonal grid—electrons mostly stay in their home layers.

This discovery, important for designing materials with quantum properties including superconductivity, overturns a long-standing assumption. For years, scientists believed that large shifts in energy bands in certain misfit materials meant electrons were physically moving from one layer to the other. But the Cornell researchers have found that chemical bonding between the mismatched layers causes electrons to rearrange in a way that increases the number of high-energy electrons, while few electrons move from one layer to the other.

SCFFBXW11 Complex Targets Interleukin-17 Receptor A for Ubiquitin–Proteasome-Mediated Degradation

Interleukin-17 (IL-17) is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that participates in innate and adaptive immune responses and plays an important role in host defense, autoimmune diseases, tissue regeneration, metabolic regulation, and tumor progression. Post-translational modifications (PTMs) are crucial for protein function, stability, cellular localization, cellular transduction, and cell death. However, PTMs of IL-17 receptor A (IL-17RA) have not been investigated. Here, we show that human IL-17RA was targeted by F-box and WD repeat domain-containing 11 (FBXW11) for ubiquitination, followed by proteasome-mediated degradation. We used bioinformatics tools and biochemical techniques to determine that FBXW11 ubiquitinated IL-17RA through a lysine 27-linked polyubiquitin chain, targeting IL-17RA for proteasomal degradation.

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