Professor Alison Hulme at University of Edinburgh, explains that the same process applies in click chemistry. "Two chemical partners are perfectly designed to match each other so that when they come into contact with each other in the right environment, they just click together," she told BBC News. But at first it could not be used in living cells - essential for understanding disease - because it involved the use of copper which kills cells. Professor Bertozzi's ground-breaking discovery made click chemistry work in living cells.

Congratulations to Dr Andres Garcia Dominguez, formerly of the Lloyd-Jones group, who has been awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF).

By looking at how, where and why this build-up happens, the work provides unique insight into a key biological process driving Parkinson’s.

The aldol reaction is amongst the oldest and most established reactions in organic chemistry. However, despite being an intensive area of research, access to aldol products, β-hydroxy ketones, has been limited to the use of aldehydes and ketones. Using born catalysis the Thomas group have overcome this and allowed esters and lactones to be used to access aldol products.

Rare-earth element dependent technologies are crucial for renewable energy generation and storage, electric vehicles, and electronic displays. However, access to these metals, in large part due to difficulties in their separation, is limited and is dominated by China. Improving how rare-earth elements are separated is essential to prevent metal supply derailing climate efforts.

Congratulations to Zoe Gidden, who has been awarded a Sir William Darling Memorial Prize of £1000. Zoe joined the Horrocks lab as a PhD student in the EASTBIO (East of Scotland BioScience) Doctoral Training Partnership and is co-supervised by Dr Mathew Horrocks and Prof. Lynne Regan at the School of Biologicial Sciences.

The study will allow researchers to better understand the barriers to combining pregnancy and breastfeeding in academic careers within physical sciences.

Examples of best practice and missed opportunities will be identified in order to better accommodate pregnant or breastfeeding staff and students in laboratory work and teaching.

Funding for the project is being provided by the EPSRC’s Vacation Internships scheme.

School of Chemistry PhD student Alexander Triccas has been named as one of the 9 finalists with 3 coming from the College of Science and Engineering (Freya Bull – School of Physics and Astronomy and Collette Larking from the School of Engineering).

The next phase of the UK X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) project “Conceptual Design and Options Analysis” has just been announced.

Hydrogen bonds are everywhere. They determine the structure and properties of water and materials. In life, hydrogen bonds govern the structure of proteins, DNA, RNA, and their associated molecular recognition processes. Clearly, biology has mastered the use of hydrogen bonds, yet such interactions occur in the presence of one of the most competitive hydrogen bonding solvents known; water. However, water is such a good hydrogen bond donor and acceptor that the energy of a single hydrogen bond is effectively nullified by the competing interactions with the solvent.