Analytical chemistry articles within Nature Chemistry

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  • News & Views |

    Heparin is an anionic polysaccharide that has tremendous clinical importance as an anticoagulant. Several dyes have been developed that can detect heparin, and the latest example — named Mallard Blue — has now been shown to have excellent sensing properties under biologically relevant conditions.

    • Zachary Shriver
    •  & Ram Sasisekharan

  • News & Views |

    Chemists have long been interested in synthesizing compounds that push the boundaries of conventional molecular structure. Incorporating metal centres into the ring unit of highly strained and unsaturated cyclic molecules can help reduce strain — a tactic that has now been used to render a previously inaccessible metallapentalyne isolable.

    • Torsten Beweries
    •  & Uwe Rosenthal

  • News & Views |

    Many of us eat mushrooms, but few of us have probably ever thought about — let alone witnessed — the epic battle of kingdoms that can occur between this delicacy and its bacterial pathogens. Now, imaging mass spectrometry has enabled the identification of a bacterium's potent antifungal weapon of choice.

    • Laura M. Sanchez
    •  & Pieter C. Dorrestein

  • News & Views |

    A new biocompatible near-infrared fluorescent probe enables super-resolution imaging of cellular proteins in live cells using a range of different labelling techniques.

    • Kathrin Lang
    •  & Jason W. Chin

  • Article |

    Fluorescent probes for bioimaging need to exhibit bright fluorescence, be biocompatible and offer several alternatives for attachment to biomolecules of interest. Here, a near-infrared silicon–rhodamine fluorophore is introduced that can be coupled to intracellular proteins in live cells and tissues and can be exploited for super-resolution microscopy.

    • Gražvydas Lukinavičius
    • , Keitaro Umezawa
    •  & Kai Johnsson

  • Article |

    Life-science research and biomedical diagnostics call for robust fluorescence barcodes of compact size and high multiplexing capability. Here DNA-origami technology was used to construct a new kind of geometrically encoded barcode with excellent structural stiffness. They hold promise for both in situ and ex situ imaging of diverse biologically relevant entities.

    • Chenxiang Lin
    • , Ralf Jungmann
    •  & Peng Yin

  • Article |

    Rapid diagnostic methods that can be applied in resource-limited settings are important in the fight against tuberculosis. Here, fluorogenic probes are described that are activated by BlaC — an enzyme secreted by tubercle bacilli. The probes have enabled detection in unprocessed human sputum of live pathogen in less than 10 min.

    • Hexin Xie
    • , Joseph Mire
    •  & Jianghong Rao

  • Article |

    Many biological processes involve the binding of proteins to cell membrane receptors, making these proteins valuable disease biomarkers and therapeutic targets. A label-free plasmonic microscopy method has now been devised to determine the distribution and local binding kinetics of these ‘membrane proteins’, on the surface of single living cells rather than ex situ.

    • Wei Wang
    • , Yunze Yang
    •  & Nongjian Tao

  • News & Views |

    Hydrogen bonds play a key role in defining the folding of proteins and the maintenance of their structure. A high-pressure NMR study of ubiquitin now provides unprecedented detail on the temperature and pressure dependence of its hydrogen-bond network.

    • Gerd Nielsen
    •  & Harald Schwalbe

  • News & Views |

    An electrochemical sensor that relies on displacement of a 'neutralizer' from a surface-bound, charged probe molecule by the analyte enables the use of a single platform for the detection of multiple analytes irrespective of their charge.

    • Anthony M. Burke
    •  & Alon A. Gorodetsky

  • Article |

    The pressure- and temperature-dependent changes of various hydrogen bonds within ubiquitin have been determined at very high resolution using NMR H-bond scalar couplings. The measured perturbations show a correlation with the sequence separation between donor and acceptor residues, and indicate that certain topologically crucial H-bonds are specifically stabilized.

    • Lydia Nisius
    •  & Stephan Grzesiek

  • Article |

    A universal detector of small molecules, proteins and nucleic acids is described that relies on the displacement of a neutralizer molecule from a sensor surface. When the neutralizer is displaced by an analyte, an electrochemical signal is generated. Ultrasensitive limits of detection are achieved, and a new record for the electrochemical detection of bacteria (0.15 colony-forming units per microlitre) is reported.

    • Jagotamoy Das
    • , Kristin B. Cederquist
    •  & Shana O. Kelley

  • News & Views |

    Careful consideration of thermodynamics has allowed the design of nucleic acid probes that are highly specific and virtually unaffected by changes in reaction conditions.

    • Grégoire Altan-Bonnet
    •  & Fred Russell Kramer

  • News & Views |

    Ultrafast chemical physics follows in the explosive wake of technological innovation, using light and radiation sources to study phenomena at timescales where the boundaries between physics and chemistry dissolve. UCP 2011, the second meeting in a series, explored the current state of the art in ultrafast time-resolved spectroscopy.

    • Julia A. Weinstein
    •  & Neil T. Hunt

  • Article |

    Cellular membrane lipids play key roles in cell regulation. Here, an environmentally sensitive fluorophore is attached to a protein that binds to a key signalling lipid to produce a membrane lipid sensor. This strategy allows sensitive, quantitative, spatiotemporal imaging of the lipid concentration in mammalian cells.

    • Youngdae Yoon
    • , Park J. Lee
    •  & Wonhwa Cho

  • News & Views |

    Transient sedimentation of proteins inside a solid-state NMR rotor under fast magic-angle spinning offers a promising solution to the challenge of determining the structures of high-molecular-weight proteins with atomic resolution. This opens new opportunities for structural analysis of large macromolecules and macromolecular assemblies.

    • Tatyana Polenova

  • Article |

    Variable-temperature mass spectrometry, isotopic labelling and computational analysis have been used to characterize a metastable non-haem oxo-iron(V) intermediate generated at cryogenic temperatures, as well as to study its cis-dihydroxylation reaction with olefins. The study provides experimental evidence for the existence of this powerful and biologically important oxidant, under conditions relevant to catalysis.

    • Irene Prat
    • , Jennifer S. Mathieson
    •  & Miquel Costas

  • News & Views |

    Glucose meters allow rapid and quantitative measurement of blood sugar levels for diabetes sufferers worldwide. Now a new method allows this proven technology to be used to quantify a much wider range of analytes.

    • Samuel K. Sia
    •  & Curtis D. Chin

  • Article |

    Portable sensors for the rapid quantitation of a variety of analytical targets could revolutionize both medical diagnostics and environmental monitoring. Here, functional DNA sensors that release the enzyme invertase in response to an analyte of choice are described. The enzyme converts sucrose to glucose which can then be easily detected using a widely available personal glucose meter.

    • Yu Xiang
    •  & Yi Lu

  • News & Views |

    A microfluidic device design that allows a nanolitre droplet to be trapped and sequentially diluted without the need for any moving parts opens up new possibilities in high-throughput screening.

    • Glenn M Walker

  • Article |

    Droplet microfluidics offer a convenient platform for high-throughput experimentation. It has been difficult, however, to rapidly and controllably vary concentration — a key process used in macro-scale experiments. Here, a droplet dilution module is described that traps a mother droplet and then repeatedly dilutes it releasing a series of droplets that define a digital concentration gradient.

    • Xize Niu
    • , Fabrice Gielen
    •  & Andrew J. deMello

  • News & Views |

    Advances in transduction of electrochemical activity through surface plasmon resonance afford new opportunities for spatially and temporally resolved studies of interfaces.

    • Lane A. Baker
    •  & Chiao-Chen Chen

  • Article |

    Amyloid cascades leading to peptide β-sheet fibrils are central to many diseases. Intermediate assemblies were recently identified as the toxic agents, but obtaining structural details of these early oligomers has largely been unsuccessful with traditional techniques. Here, ion mobility methods provide evidence for structural transitions from random to β-sheet assembly.

    • Christian Bleiholder
    • , Nicholas F. Dupuis
    •  & Michael T. Bowers

  • Research Highlights |

    Desorption electrospray ionization has been used to detect reaction intermediates through mass spectrometry.

    • Gavin Armstrong

  • News & Views |

    Testing for enzymes is important for diagnosing various medical conditions but can be problematic because of the complexity of physiological media such as blood. Now, a method of detecting phospholipases has been developed that neatly couples their concentration with the aggregation of gold nanoparticles.

    • Nicholas A. Melosh

  • Research Highlights |

    Single molecules have been imaged using the heat they release on absorption of light.

    • Gavin Armstrong

  • Research Highlights |

    Energetic phase transitions that cause whole crystals to move have been studied at the molecular level.

    • Neil Withers

  • News & Views |

    A series of scanning probe microscopy experiments combined with density functional theory calculations have now been used to unambiguously determine the structure of a marine natural product. Can this method become generally useful for the determination of the structure of natural products?

    • John W. Blunt

  • News & Views |

    Electron transfer between ions and water is of fundamental interest for many processes in biology and chemistry. Now, using core-electron excitation of hydrated iron cations, ultrafast electron transfer to the coordinating water molecules has been detected.

    • Anders Nilsson

  • Article |

    A detailed understanding of solute–solvent interactions is crucial to appreciating the important role aqueous ions play in various biological and catalytic processes. Now soft X-ray spectroscopy reveals new features in aqueous ion spectra that are due to solute–solvent interaction and electron transfer.

    • Emad F. Aziz
    • , M. Hannelore Rittmann-Frank
    •  & Majed Chergui

  • Article |

    The structure of many natural products can often only be confirmed by comparison with a synthetic sample. Here, scanning probe microscopy techniques allow the ultimate discrimination between structures suggested by the standard range of analytical techniques, proving the power of single-molecule imaging for molecular structure determination.

    • Leo Gross
    • , Fabian Mohn
    •  & Marcel Jaspars

  • Article |

    Thermal reduction of graphene oxide is an attractive route towards the preparation of graphene, but complete removal of residual oxygen is problematic. Now, molecular dynamics simulations elucidate the chemical changes involved in this process.

    • Akbar Bagri
    • , Cecilia Mattevi
    •  & Vivek B. Shenoy

  • News & Views |

    Ultrasound can be used to control molecular processes as delicate as rotation around a single carbon–carbon bond.

    • S. Karthikeyan
    •  & Rint P. Sijbesma

  • Article |

    Converting dioxygen into more reactive species is extremely useful for direct oxygenation of organic compounds, but doing this with cheap and non-polluting elements is difficult. Now, a carbene-activated silylene has been shown to activate dioxygen, resulting in the isolation of elusive silicon–oxygen species at room temperature.

    • Yun Xiong
    • , Shenglai Yao
    •  & Matthias Driess

  • Article |

    Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are typically built by linking metal centres with organic bridges. By using metal–diimine complexes as linkers, researchers have now immobilized these photoresponsive moieties into a MOF scaffold, which enabled them to observe a different excited state from that occurring in solution, and study a photoreaction crystallographically.

    • Alexander J. Blake
    • , Neil R. Champness
    •  & Xue-Zhong Sun

  • Article |

    For quadrupole moments up to +39 Buckinghams, increasing π-acidity of aromatic surfaces is shown to cause tighter anion binding in tandem mass spectrometry experiments, higher binding energies in molecular models, stronger charge-transfer absorption bands, and increasingly effective and selective anion transport across lipid-bilayer membranes.

    • Ryan E. Dawson
    • , Andreas Hennig
    •  & Stefan Matile

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