In drug discovery, building complex molecules quickly is the name of the game.

A supernova remnant is supposed to be a rough neighborhood for a newborn star. Shock waves rip through space at thousands of kilometers per second.

Researchers have captured how a molecule redistributes energy after absorbing light, differentiating the roles of individual atoms in the process. They used X-ray flashes from the European XFEL to show that different atoms in the same molecule can reveal different aspects of the process.

A new light-powered sensor can detect cancer from just a few molecules in a blood sample, an advance that could push detection to far earlier stages. According to ScienceDaily ,

That sharp, briny smell is not the salt, it is a gas made by life, breathed out by tiny ocean creatures too small to see. For a while, scientists believed they had caught that exact smell drifting through the air of a planet 124 light years away.

Researchers at the Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI) at Kanazawa University, the Institute for Molecular Science and SOKENDAI have uncovered the hidden mechanism behind a molecular switch—a molecule that can change between different structural states in response to a chemical signal.

Small molecules have critical roles at all levels of biological complexity and yet remain orphans of the central dogma. Chemical biologists, working with small molecules, expand our understanding of these central elements of life. Chemical biologists have ...