EurekAlert! News by Subject: Chemistry & Physics - News by Subject: Chemistry & Physics

Chemistry & Physics

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 13-Sep-2025 04:11 ET (13-Sep-2025 08:11 GMT/UTC)

How urea forms spontaneously

ETH Zurich
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Urea is a fundamental industrial chemical and may have played a central role in the origin of life.

ETH researchers have discovered a new reaction: the spontaneous formation of urea on aqueous surfaces from carbon dioxide (CO₂) and ammonia (NH₃).

Its formation does not require catalysts, pressure or heat, illustrating how urea may have accumulated on Early Earth.

The reaction also has the potential for sustainable and low-energy urea synthesis.

Journal: Science

St. Jude algorithm puts water to work in drug discovery

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital unveiled a tool to capture protein-water networks and their contribution to drug-binding sites.

Journal: Nature Communications

Roberto Morandotti wins prestigious IEEE Photonics Society Quantum Electronics Award

Institut national de la recherche scientifique - INRS
Grant and Award Announcement

Professor Roberto Morandotti, a globally recognized leader in quantum optics and photonics at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), has won the 2025 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photonic Society Quantum Electronics Award. This award pays tribute to Professor Morandotti’s pioneering work in entanglement generation and the processing of complex quantum states in photonic devices and systems, both as scientific head at the Ultrahigh Speed Light Manipulation Laboratory and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Smart Photonics.

How gut bacteria change after exposure to pesticides

Ohio State University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study is the first to map changes to specific gut bacteria based on interactions between human microbes and insect-killing chemicals observed in the lab and an animal model. The analysis showed that over a dozen pesticides influence human gut bacteria growth patterns, affect how gut microorganisms process nutrients and camp out inside some bacteria. Experiments in mice showed that one gut bacteria species provides some protection against pesticide toxicity, hinting at the possibility for a probiotic approach to preventing some of their damaging health effects.

Journal: Nature Communications
Funder: NIH/National Institute of General Medical Sciences

RNA codon expansion via programmable pseudouridine editing and decoding

Peking University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Peking University, June 27, 2025: To overcome the inherent challenge of translation termination interference caused by stop codon reprogramming in mammalian cells, researchers from Peking University led by Chen Peng from College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering and Yi Chengqi from School of Life Sciences have developed a novel codon expansion strategy that enables precise incorporation of noncanonical amino acids (ncAAs) without perturbing natural genetic codes. This innovative approach utilizes post-transcriptionally modified RNA codons—distinct from all 64 standard genetic codons—within targeted transcripts to encode ncAAs in mammalian systems. This work establishes a versatile platform for expanding the genetic code in mammalian cells, paving the way for advanced protein engineering and functional studies in complex biological systems. These findings were published in Nature on June 25, 2025, under the title "RNA codon expansion via programmable pseudouridine editing and decoding."

Journal: Nature

New photonic platform developed by Polish research team

University of Warsaw, Faculty of Physics
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A team of researchers from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, the Military University of Technology, and the Institut Pascal at Université Clermont Auvergne has developed a novel method for using cholesteric liquid crystals in optical microcavities. The platform created by the researchers enables the formation and dynamic tuning of photonic crystals with integrated spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and controlled laser emission. The results of this groundbreaking research have been published in the renowned journal Laser & Photonics Reviews.

Journal: Laser & Photonics Review

Manufacturing chemicals via orthogonal strategy, making full use of waste plastic resources in real life

Peking University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Addressing the challenge of waste plastics treatments, the scientific community has been pursuing innovative solutions. Recently, Peking University researchers led by Ma Ding from College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, in collaboration with Xu Shutao from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, uncovered how complex plastic mixtures can be utilized based on the differences in the physical and chemical properties of the components with the aids of NMR technique and catalytic approaches. This work provides a new treatment strategy for recovering real-life plastics and maximizing their potential as raw materials. Their findings, entitled “In-line NMR Guided Orthogonal Transformation of Real-life Plastics,” were published in Nature on June 25, 2025.

Journal: Nature