Can frozen bacteria repair their own DNA?

The theory that frozen bacteria are able to repair their own DNA could explain how they are able to survive for millennia in the permafrost, and could mean there are frozen bugs on Mars. Not everyone is so sure, as I report for Chemistry World.

Repairing DNA could let frozen bacteria survive for millennia

28 August 2007

An international team of scientists believe they have strong evidence that bacteria trapped in permafrost are able to survive for hundreds of thousands of years by repairing their DNA.

If Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and his colleagues are correct, then the findings could mean that the frozen poles of Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa could also harbour ancient life. But experts on microbial survival contacted by Chemistry World were split on the significance of the findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

Read the rest of this article here.

Health matters...

A few health-related news stories from Chemistry World:

Green Tea's secret tunnelling revealed - 23 April 2007

Scientists have used quantum mechanics to work out why green tea is good for you. The health benefits of the brew are all down to a quirk of the quantum world known as tunneling, they say.

Read more here

Molecular probe identifies patients at risk of Alzheimer's - 21 December 2006

A new molecule could provide an early warning system for Alzheimer’s disease, US researchers hope.

Read more here

Shampoo Chemical study 'flawed' - 07 August 2006

A US scientist has suggested that pregnant women should avoid using shampoos and other cosmetics containing the chemical diethanolamine (DEA), after finding that it inhibited brain development in mouse foetuses. But the research, reported by news outlets around the world, has been slammed by a leading toxicologist.

Read more here

Industrial solvent in cancer probe - 28 July 2006

The cancer risk posed by trichloroethylene (TCE) should be reassessed, according to a report from a US National Academies ’ National Research Council committee.

Please contact me by email if you would like a copy of this article.

Miscellaneous chemistry

A bunch of other articles from the Chemistry World archives:

Counterion does the twist - 26 July 2007
Chiral phosphate and catalyst work together to improve selectivity

Model enzyme attacks alkyl mercury - 12 July 2007
US chemists have developed a molecular mimic of an enzyme that destroys alkyl mercury pollutants

DNA photography - 16 May 2007
Biomolecules show their best side

Complex molecules teamed with iodine - 21 February 2007
Enantioselective synthesis opens route to marine natural products

DNA-based detection for Uranium - 05 February 2007
High sensitivity and selectivity claimed for a portable sensor that detects the most common form of uranium.

Molecular framework sucks up hydrogen - 07 September 2006
A new material that absorbs significant amounts of hydrogen has been reported by UK chemists.

Whitesides wins priestley medal - 01 September 2006
Awarded ACS honour for lifetime achievement in chemistry

Lasers shed light on magnetic resonance - 30 August 2006
New technique probes distribution of nuclear spin.

Frozen fuel find rewrites rule book - 23 August 2006
Large amounts of methane hydrates found at surprisingly shallow depths below the sea floor

Chemist claims world firework record - 17 August 2006
World beating effort sees 55 000 rockets set off.

Switchable surfactants give on-demand emulsions - 17 August 2006
Carbon dioxide and air control molecule's surface action.

Lasers make erbium a cool customer - 27 July 2006
crystals turned into miniature refrigerators.

Features

Chemistry World and Education in Chemistry magazines have published a few of my features.

This one about metals in polymers [plastics] appeared in the November 2006 edition of Chemistry World:

Metallic Plastic

Polymers pervade nearly every part of our lives, and almost everyone knows how useful these long-chain molecules are. Meanwhile, any high-school chemistry student can tell you that metal complexes have many interesting properties like redox behaviour, catalysis and magnetism. But is it possible to get the best of both worlds?

Slowly but surely, chemists have developed ways to make a range of polymers with the same exciting physical and chemical properties as metals, without sacrificing the mechanical strength and ease of processing found in conventional plastics. This has opened up plenty of potential applications for these materials, from nanotechnology to fuel cells, chemical sensors to catalysis.

RSC members can access this feature here. Alternatively, please contact me by email if you would like the full copy.


Education in Chemistry is a magazine for teachers of chemistry. Every issue they include a supplement called 'InfoChem' aimed at secondary school chemistry students. I've written two, one on the element selenium in our diet (from the November 2006 issue), the other on nuclear waste (in the March 2007 issue):

A little selenium goes a long way

Despite being one of the rarest elements on Earth, selenium is an essential nutrient. But our diets contain less selenium now than ever before. Does this put our health at risk?

The Department of Health’s recommended daily selenium intake is 75 g (micrograms) for men and 60 g for women. That’s about the amount contained in a small can (20–25 g) of tuna. Other selenium-rich foods include Brazil nuts and kidney while beef, shellfish and chicken also contain relatively large amounts of the element. In general, however, selenium intake in Europe has fallen dramatically in the past 30 years. The average person in the UK now gets about half of the recommended amount in their diet.

Read the full feature here


Dealing with nuclear waste

Nuclear power is a low-carbon technology, but it does come with a catch: it produces waste that emits harmful radiation for many thousands, even millions of years. UK chemists, however, are working to produce materials and technology to deal with this problem.

The UK looks set to increase its reliance on nuclear power. Scientists and politicians agree that this technology will be a necessary part of the energy mix to meet the pledge to cut 60 per cent of the country's carbon emissions by 2050. The UK currently has 24 nuclear reactors, many of which began operating in the 1950s. They produce one-fifth of our electricity but are now nearing the end of their lifetime and need to be decommissioned, which will produce yet more waste. Even if no new reactors are built there will be an estimated 478,000 m³ of radioactive waste by 2120: enough to fill London's Royal Albert Hall five times over. What is this waste and how is it being dealt with?

Read the full feature here


Finally, a mini-feature on the use of vegetables in place of conventional reagents in labs in developing countries, from Chemistry World 20 March 2007.

Is your lab ready to go veggie?

Imagine heading down to the vegetable patch not the store cupboard next time you need a jar of sodium hydride. Or how about consulting your local market stall, not the chemicals catalogue, next time you need an elaborate catalyst? Not as strange an idea as it sounds, thinks Geoffrey Cordell, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, US.

Cordell has published a study into the wealth of useful reactions that can be performed using fruit and veg in place of other, more conventional reagents. In a review article published in the latest issue of the Journal of Natural Products he demonstrates that the greengrocer's could be an unexpected goldmine of sustainable, cheap reagents that would benefit chemistry in developing countries.

Read the full article here

Science Policy

In 2006 I worked as an adviser at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), in the Houses of Parliament, Westminster. POST exists to help explain scientific issues of relevance to parliament to MPs and Lords so they are informed when it comes to voting on legislation. My task (sponsored by the Royal Society of Chemistry) was to research and write a briefing note entitled Strategic Science about the concerns over the numbers of scientists UK schools and universities are producing. You can read my note (in .pdf) here.

I've covered science policy for Chemistry World too. Reporting on the percieved lack of science graduates here and chipping in with additional reporting at a House of Commons event here.

Music reviews - GIGWISE.com

Not just a science writer... I did a stint as a reviewer for GIGWISE.com, reviewing albums, DVDs, and live gigs in Manchester. Here's my thoughts on the musical spectrum from punk rock to Shaggy, via t.A.T.u, and a few others in between:

Doves, Polytechnic @ Apollo, Manchester, 06/12/05
They love local lads done good in Manchester, and Doves are received with raptures from a home-town audience tonight.

Millencolin, Flogging Molly, Randy, The Unseen @ Academy, Manchester, 05/11/05
Tonight’s punk extravaganza kicks off in hardcore fashion with The Unseen from Boston. Lead singer Mark charges mohawked head-first into a set of screaming, hi-octane punk rock.

Casual Saints, The Dirty Years, Suka Suka @ Star and Garter, Manchester, 12/10/05
Three new bands on offer tonight at the Star and Garter, a small unassuming pub behind Piccadilly station with a reputation for great live music in an intimate (ie tiny) room.

Inme, Sweet Suzie, The Morenas @ Academy 2, Manchester, 05/10/05
The majority of the crowd tonight may not yet have sat their A-Levels but they know what they want: shouty songs with big riffs and obvious lyrics about bedrooms and loneliness. They are not about to be disappointed. Gigwise definitely is.

The Flaming Lips - 'VOID Video Overview In Deceleration' DVD Released 03/10/05
Anyone who’s ever been to a Flaming Lips show will know all about their ability to manipulate surreal imagery and zany props to create full-on freak-out visual back-up to their beautiful, tragi-comic psycho-rock.

t.A.T.u - 'Dangerous And Moving' (released 10/10/05)
Want to get ahead in the pop business? A little lesbian action does you no harm. Sparking off the are they?/aren't they?/should we care? debate once again, everyone's favourite Slavic lady-lovers have got a new album out.

Snap Ant - 'This Is Jut' (released 10/10/05)
This is the debut album from Liverpool-based chap Snap Ant, who is also one half of Ninja Tunes outfit Super Numeri. The Ninja ethos of out-there sounds on a mission straight to your cerebellum is prominent in this remarkably accomplished and super-cool LP.

Bloodhound Gang - 'Hefty Fine' (released 26/09/05)
The Gang return with a fourth attempt to make the soundtrack to drinking a keg of beer, soiling yourself, vomiting on a girl's t*ts, and finding it all very funny indeed.

Queen Adreena - 'Live at the ICA' (released 19/09/05)
Katie Jane Garside and Crispin Gray, the creative core of 90’s grungers Daisy Chainsaw, re-emerged in 2000 from the wreckage of that band’s implosion. In their new guise, Queen Adreena, they retain the punk theatre that made so many people take notice of Garside’s ferocious performances.

Shaggy - 'Clothesdrop' (released 19/09/05)
Mr. Lover Lover is back with another boombastic take on the commercial dancehall reggae format that has earned him massive worldwide sales, international awards and, he would have us believe, more honeys than you can shake yo' booty at.

Arcade Fire - 'Funeral' (released 28/02/05)
By the time you realise you are hooked on the full-length debut from these Canadian multi-instrumentalists, it's too late to do anything about it...

Strange but true

Here's some Chemistry World stories that seem more like sci-fi than science journalism. An invisibility shield? Really? Radioactive scorpion venom? Do me a favour. How about a computer that replaces silicon transistors with tiny bubbles of air? Now you're just taking the mickey...

The metamaterials space race (22 March 2007)

They said it couldn't be done. Ok, they still do, really. But the technology that makes invisibility shields a theoretical possibility took a major step forward with reports of a material that bends visible light away from itself.

Read the full story here


Radioactive scorpion venom stings brain tumours (28 July 2006)

Scorpion venom carries a nasty sting for brain tumour cells, according to US researchers. A peptide based on chlorotoxin, found in the venom of the Giant Yellow Israeli Scorpion, has been used to target glioma, a particularly aggressive form of brain tumour.

A synthetic form of the peptide, known as TM-601, is not only able to pass the blood-brain barrier with ease, but also seeks out and selectively binds to glioma cells.

Read the full story here


Bubbles put the logic into lab-on-a-chip

The boundary between computing and chemistry has been redrawn, thanks to devices that mimic digital processors using the physical properties of flowing liquids and bubbles. The development opens the way for programmable lab-on-a-chip technologies without external control systems, claim the researchers.

In these devices the 'bits' (the zeroes and ones of binary language) are tiny gas bubbles in a stream of liquid flowing through precisely designed channels a few micrometres across.

Read the full story here

nanorods, nanodots, nanothis, nanothat...

For Chemistry World news I've covered many developments in nanotechnology, the science of the very small. I've grouped them together in this post, most recent first.


Quantum dots lined up in a stripy nanorod using strain forces. Nice pictures of some very small but very pretty stuff in this one from 19 July 2007:

Striped nanorods feel the strain

Stripy nanorods containing evenly spaced quantum dots have been prepared thanks to strain forces, report US nanochemists.

This is the first time that strain has been used to construct a '1D superlattice' of this sort without the need to fix the particles to a solid surface, said lead author Paul Alivisatos at the University of California at Berkeley. The free-standing colloidal particles 'can go where particles on a substrate can't go,' explained Alivisatos, opening up a host of biological and other applications.

Read the full story here


All the colours of the rainbow from magnetic photonic crystals, 13 July 2007:

Colourful Colloids

A simple mixture of iron oxide, a polymer and water can take on any colour simply by applying a magnetic field, US researchers report.

Team leader Yadong Yin of the University of California, Riverside, said that the photonic crystals, closely packed arrays of magnetic colloids, could provide a low-cost route to materials for display screens.

Read more here

I've written about two devices for dispensing tiny drops of liquid. One is capable of injecting miniscule volumes into individual cells, while the other (the world's smallest) can be used to watch the 'dance' of atoms as they crystallise:

Attosyringe shows potential (from 10 July 2007)

US electrochemists have given hope to biologists who want to inject precise and tiny volumes of fluids into living cells. They have developed a syringe that delivers attolitre (10^-18 l) volumes.

Michael Mirkin of Queens College, City University of New York, used electrochemistry to control flow into and out of a glass 'needle'. The technique was used to inject fluids into living cells

read more about the attosyringe here

Smallest pipette delivers zeptolitre volumes (from 16 April 2007)

The world's smallest pipette has been developed by US scientists. It is capable of dispensing drops of a molten gold-germanium alloy with a volume of a few zeptolitres, that is, a billionth of a trillionth of a litre. Watching these tiny drops led Eli and Peter Sutter of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York to make observations that challenge the classical theory of crystallisation.

Read more about the zeptopipette here


It's all very well making devices that are millions of times thinner than a human hair,
but how much do they weigh? I hear you ask! The scientists behind this story from 29 January 2007 can tell you:

Nanocantilever sets new mass detection record

US scientists have built a device capable of detecting masses as small as 1 attogram (1 x 10^-18 g) at ambient temperature and pressure. This sets a new record for detection under these conditions, they claim. Previous devices have required high vacuum and low temperature in order to achieve comparable sensitivity.

The tiny cantilever a few hundred nanometres across vibrates like a diving board. When an object rests on the 'diving board' the frequency at which it vibrates changes in proportion to the mass of the object.

Read more about the nanocantilever here


Physicists are getting very excited about graphene, a one-atom thick sheet of graphite. It has some amazing properties but when you make it into a nano-drum, I get excited too (from 25 Jan 2007):

Graphene resonator drums up interest

Drum roll please. US scientists have created a one-atom-thick membrane that resonates like a drumskin. Paul McEuen and co-workers at Cornell University, New York, US, stretched a single sheet of graphene - the hexagonal layer of carbon atoms found in graphite and carbon nanotubes - over a trench etched into a silicon dioxide surface.

No sign of a nano-drumstick though: the researchers 'beat' the drum with a voltage or a laser matched to the natural resonant frequency of the graphene sheet. The resonators are ideally suited for mass, force and charge sensing,

Read more about the nano-drumskin here


All these things are mind-bendingly small, but I think being able to actually see them is even more incredible. Check out the UKs most powerful microscope, launched 20 Oct 2007. I was there. I saw atoms. Wow.

UK researchers unveil country's most powerful microscope

For the first time in the UK, researchers will be able to ‘see’ atoms and the bonds between them, thanks to the country’s most powerful commercially available electron microscope. The London Centre for Nanotechnology, this week unveiled its brand new monochromated scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) at Imperial College, London, UK. It is the only Monochromated electron microscope in the UK, and there are only a handful in the world.

The Titan will be used in a range of projects, including an investigation of bone structure. ‘It came as revelation to me that on the atomic scale, bone is not well understood,’ said David McComb, reader at the department of materials at Imperial, who has overseen the installation of the £3 million facility. McComb hopes this will be ‘a good starting point’ from which to understand how osteoporosis develops.

Read more here

Need a battery for your nanobot? This flexible source of electricity could be harnessed to drive molecular devices (from 11 Aug 2006):

Nanomachines power up with piezoelectricity

Nanomachines sound like a great idea, but where is the nanobattery to power them? The problem could be solved with piezolelectric nanowires (NWs), tiny strips of matter a few atoms wide that give out electricity when they are flexed.

US researchers have caused a series of zinc oxide (ZnO) NWs to bend by dragging the tip of an atomic force microscope (AFM) over a vertical array of NWs on a conducting surface. The strained NWs gave out an electric current which could be detected by the AFM. Once the tip passed over the wires and they sprung back to their upright position, the current returned to zero.

read more here


And finally, you can't get a switch much smaller than a single molecule (from 8 August 2006):

Single molecule makes electronic switch

A single molecule, trapped between two electrodes, acts as a switch and has a ‘memory’ of the type used in data storage, Swiss and US researchers have found.

Heike Riel of IBM’s research labs in Zurich says this is ‘a step along the way’ to making nanoscale electronic components a reality.

read more here

How green are your brakes?

From Chemistry World online (www.rsc.org/chemistryworld) 31 July 2007

Your exhaust emissions may be up to standard, but your car's not as green as you think.

Car tyres and brakes produce toxic metal emissions

It's easy to assume that cars pollute our cities only via their exhaust pipes. But Swedish chemists have shown that wear and tear on tyres and brakes contribute to significant emission of toxic metals into urban air.

read more here

New hope in fight against superbugs

From Chemistry World online (www.rsc.org/chemistryworld), 6 Aug 2007

Study shows molecule's antibiotic mechanism and paves way for new group of drugs.

Unique antibiotic beats superbugs' resistance

The discovery of how a unique antibiotic kills its targets has uncovered a new way to tackle resistant superbugs.

A team of chemists and structural biologists have studied how the natural antibiotic lactivicin interacts with a crucial bacterial protein.

read more here

Welcome to my blog!

Hi, I'm Tom, and this is my blog.

Thanks for stopping by. Here you can find links to all the articles I've written. These include work for Chemistry World and Education in Chemistry (Royal Society of Chemistry magazines), the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, as well as music reviews for Gigwise.com. I hope you enjoy reading them.

If you want full copies of any of the articles, please let me know and I'll gladly send them. Also, feel free to email me if you want to discuss commissions, I am available!

Cheers,

Tom