Little of the mixed consumer plastics thrown away or placed in recycle bins actually ends up being recycled. Nearly 90% is buried in landfills or incinerated at commercial facilities that generate greenhouse gases and airborne ...
Polymers
Oct 22, 2023
2
493
Like a pair of human hands, certain organic molecules have mirror-image versions of themselves, a chemical property known as chirality. These so-called "handed" molecules are essential for biology and have intriguingly been ...
Astronomy
Jun 14, 2016
23
3975
Bottled water sold in Spain is practically free of constituents given off by plastic packaging or glass bottle lids. They are only detected in some cases, albeit in quantities much lower than limits found harmful for health. ...
Other
Aug 22, 2014
0
2
In recent years, the practice of feeding dogs raw meat-based diets instead of kibble has grown, in part because raw meat does not require heavy processing or include binders and preservatives that could negatively affect ...
Plastics are everywhere in our daily lives, but not all plastics are created equal—far from it.
Polymers
Apr 26, 2023
1
656
The surface of graphene, a one atom thick sheet of carbon, can be randomly decorated with oxygen to create graphene oxide; a form of graphene that could have a significant impact on the chemical, pharmaceutical and electronic ...
Nanomaterials
Sep 11, 2014
0
1
A simple two-carbon compound may have been a crucial player in the evolution of metabolism before the advent of cells, according to a new study published October 4 in the open access journal PLOS Biology, by Nick Lane and ...
Evolution
Oct 4, 2022
1
909
An ultrafast "electron camera" at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has made the first direct snapshots of atomic nuclei in molecules that are vibrating within millionths of a billionth of a ...
General Physics
Aug 31, 2016
0
3348
Michigan State University and Stanford University scientists have invented a nanoparticle that eats away—from the inside out—portions of plaques that cause heart attacks.
Bio & Medicine
Jan 28, 2020
3
2034
Researchers have newly discovered a surprising and potentially significant reason why eating foods frequently cooked at high temperatures, such as red meat and deep-fried fare, elevates cancer risk. The alleged culprit: DNA ...
Biochemistry
Jun 13, 2023
0
694
In pharmacology and biochemistry, a small molecule is an organic compound that is not a polymer. Biopolymers such as nucleic acids, proteins, and polysaccharides (such as starch or cellulose) are not small molecules, although their constituent monomers—ribo- or deoxyribonucleotides, amino acids, and monosaccharides, respectively—are often considered to be. Very small oligomers are also usually considered small molecules, such as dinucleotides, peptides such as the antioxidant glutathione, and disaccharides such as sucrose.
While small molecules almost always have a lower molecular weight than biopolymers, a very small protein with a defined fold, such as the artificial ten-amino-acid protein chignolin[1], can indeed be smaller than some exceptionally large small molecules such as triglycerides.
Small molecules can have a variety of biological functions, serving as cell signalling molecules, as tools in molecular biology, as drugs in medicine, and in countless other roles. These compounds can be natural (such as secondary metabolites) or artificial (such as antiviral drugs); they may have a beneficial effect against a disease (such as FDA approved drugs) or may be detrimental (such as teratogens and carcinogens).
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