In biological terms the processes that aid digestion, create vitamins and manufacture plant poisons affecting the heart might seem like being worlds apart, but in terms of their chemistry they show a remarkable degree of similarity. Establishing the chemical connections that lie at the heart of these biological processes can be said to be the…

Two of the most fundamental processes in life, the transport of oxygen by blood in animals and the absorption of light during photosynthesis in plants, rely on pigments to carry out their highly important missions. Hans Fischer received the 1930 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for showing how Nature constructs these different coloured pigments from the…

Creating the proteins that perform the host of tasks necessary to support life is not unlike creating a chain, link by link. In this case, the links, or amino acids, are attached sequentially to the growing chain, or peptide. Once the peptide is made, the chain folds up, either on its own or with others,…

Building complex chemicals from their simplest components in the laboratory relies on the tools available for the task, and for chemists these tools are the repertoire of reactions they have at hand. Using these reactions, synthetic organic chemists act as chemical construction engineers, gradually piecing together the correct molecules in the correct manner until the…

In chemistry, shape matters. For chemicals to function properly in the body it is not only important that the molecular components are connected in their correct order but also that these components occupy their correct three-dimensional positions in space. A wrongly positioned atom or structural element creates either an ineffective chemical, much like using the…

The two methods awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in Chemistry changed the way in which chemists artificially created carbon-containing, or organic, compounds in the laboratory. Building such compounds is limited by the reactions that chemists have at their disposal to piece together or manipulate a series of carbon atoms to form more complex products. The…

From apples to ylang-ylang, the range of scents and flavours that fill Nature’s vast garden of plants are formed chiefly from specific combinations of volatile organic compounds, known collectively as essential oils. For decades the tools used in chemistry were deemed ill-equipped to untangle these complex and unstable mixtures, until Otto Wallach devised ways in…

Most chemicals that have an important role in biology exist as a pair of almost identical twins. These twins, called chiral enantiomers, contain exactly the same atoms, but they appear as mirror images that do not fit on top of each other, like placing your left hand on top of your right hand. Such a…

Swapping goods and possessions can lead to unexpected surprises, and in the case of chemistry this is no exception. One of the most popular and useful reactions that chemists use to build new molecules involves a curious process in which particular atoms switch their molecular partners, and the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry rewarded three…

One of the main tasks of organic chemistry is to investigate and reproduce artificially the carbon-containing chemicals that help drive the vital processes in animals and plants. This is important not only for broadening knowledge of chemical and biological phenomena, but also for seeking ways of applying chemistry to everyday life. Uncovering and replicating Nature’s…