Protein engineering is a powerful tool to create new proteins with useful functions and behaviors, but it is slow, laborious and requires specialized knowledge, limiting its broad application. Here, the authors present a system that combines AI and experimental automation to autonomously engineer proteins without human intervention.

Bipolar ion-exchange membranes are a class of charged polymers that enable precise control of ionic fluxes and local pH, making them potentially valuable for many energy and environmental applications. This Review focuses on the fundamental physics underpinning their operation across multiple scales, from nanomorphology to integration within devices such as in bipolar-membrane electrodialysis (BPM-ED).

Steering the selectivity-determining steps is as important as the C–C coupling steps in CO₂ electroreduction. Here the authors highlight that single-site noble metal dopants on the Cu surface can influence C–O bond dissociation and direct the post-C–C coupling pathways to ethylene versus ethanol.

A self-driving catalysis laboratory, Fast-Cat, is presented for efficient high-throughput screening of high-pressure, high-temperature, gas–liquid reaction conditions using rhodium-catalyzed hydroformylation as a case study. Fast-Cat is used to Pareto map the reaction space and investigate the varying performance of several phosphorus-based hydroformylation ligands.

With the global climate crisis, approaches to capture emissions are critical, with the heavy industry sector being particularly challenging to decarbonize. The authors describe a new enzyme cascade for converting industrial emissions into formate salts as a hydrogen carrier or building block for chemicals.

The design of CO₂ electrolyzers is complicated by coupled transport and reaction phenomena. Here the authors develop a continuum model incorporating physical phenomena across multiple scales to predict the activity and selectivity of CO₂ electrolysis, along with the loss of CO₂ due to crossover in membrane electrode assemblies.

Achieving a net-zero future requires that hard-to-abate sectors be addressed. Co-production offers an opportunity to mitigate chemical and steel sector emissions by extracting H₂ and CO from steelmaking off-gas and using them for chemical syntheses. The authors examine carbon mitigation and costs of co-producing chemicals and steel in China.

Real-life plastic waste exists as complex mixtures, posing a challenge for efficient upcycling. Now a sunlight-powered thermocatalytic process using a Ni-based catalyst converts a plastic mixture into CH₄, H₂O and HCl. Notably, chlorine poisoning is minimized through temperature modulation driven by the diurnal sunlight cycle.

Robust decarbonization strategies for the petrochemical industry are hampered by many sources of uncertainty in greenhouse gas emissions estimates. Here the authors quantify and prioritize uncertainty sources, finding that the most significant factor is the lack of detailed data about specific production processes used in chemical facilities.

It is essential to develop new dressing designs for wounds that can maintain ideal thermal comfort even under high temperatures in outdoor conditions. Now, a daytime radiative cooling dressing based on a polyamide 6/silk fibroin bilayer is demonstrated to accelerate wound healing by reducing the thermal load for skin wounds under sunlight illumination.

Jennifer Curtis from the University of California Davis talks to Nature Chemical Engineering about her path into particle technology, work in computational simulations of multiphase particle flows and the importance of industrial collaborations in advancing the field.

Wastes can be leveraged for decarbonization, provided we know how to think about them, argues Corinne D. Scown.

Crystallization plays a pivotal role in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals. This Comment briefly reflects on past achievements and emerging opportunities in industrial crystallization, particularly considering increasing molecular and system complexities.