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Articles on Biochemistry

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Water microdroplets provide a unique interface that can significantly speed up chemical reactions. Marianna Armata/Moment via Getty Images

Water was both essential and a barrier to early life on Earth – microdroplets are one potential solution to this paradox

The chemical reaction that forms essential biomolecules like proteins and DNA normally doesn’t occur in the presence of water. Microdroplets provide a unique environment that make it possible.
Click chemistry joins molecules together by reacting an azide with a cyclooctyne. Boris Zhitkov/Moment via Getty Images

Nobel Prize: How click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry are transforming the pharmaceutical and material industries

Click and bioorthogonal chemistry has enabled researchers to closely study how molecules work in their natural state in living organisms, with applications that span from cancer treatment to polymers.
Climate change stresses plants, forcing them to turn off the cellular machinery that helps them grow. (Shutterstock)

How climate change stresses plants and alters their growth

The climate crisis makes it important to investigate and understand the mechanisms of plant growth if we are to keep agricultural crops sustainable.
The pipes imprinted on microfluidic chips are about the size of a human hair, and in many ways are like miniaturizing a chemical manufacturing plant. (Katherine Elvira)

New cancer treatments can be tested in artificial cells on tiny chips the size of a postage stamp

Artificial cells on tiny microfluidic chips can provide early insight into how new cancer drugs behave in cells, and why certain kinds of cancer are more resistant to chemotherapy treatment.
One potential way to make opioids less addictive is to make them target injured tissue rather than the healthy brain. PM Images/Photodisk via Getty Images

Designing less addictive opioids, through chemistry

While the COVID-19 pandemic raged on, the opioid epidemic got worse as drug overdose deaths soared. New research proposes a way to chemically modify opioids to reduce the risk of addiction.
Breathing pure oxygen would be like fireworks exploding in your body. And that’s not always a good thing. Shutterstock

Curious Kids: what happens if you breathe pure oxygen?

You might think the more oxygen you breathe in the better. But too much oxygen can make you sick.
Her deep breath has to get to the baby. electravk/Moment via Getty Images

How does a baby ‘breathe’ while inside its mom?

A fetus needs oxygen long before its lungs work and it’s exposed to the air. Some ingenious biochemistry explains how the mother’s blood delivers it.
At a molecular level, stresses and strains can make your body clock break into a sprint. Lightspring/Shutterstock

Tick, tock… how stress speeds up your chromosomes’ ageing clock

Emerging evidence suggests that prolonged stress exposure can accelerate the ticking rate of an internal cellular clock. By doing so, stress can contribute to faster ageing and body deterioration.

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