> “for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis”
The prize is about artificial catalysts. A catalyst is a substance that speeds up a reaction without being consumed. Another way to speed reactions up is to heat them, but that consumes energy and often leads to by-products that must be removed and disposed of.
The "asymmetric" part has to do with one kind of by-product. Some reactions produce 50% of a by-product that must be separated out and disposed of. This happens because some molecules have 3D structure that's different than its mirror image. Think of the way that certain objects like bottle caps and screws only turn one way to tighten. Molecules can have that property (including many drugs you may have taken), and if the handedness is wrong, in many applications, it's a by-product and/or poison. An asymmetric catalyst can make molecules of one handedness selectively, saving material, money, and energy.
The "organocatalysis" part has to do with what the catalyst is made of. Prior to the awardee's research, catalysts tended to contain metal atoms. A few Nobels have been awarded for catalytic processes that use metals.
So metals are great in principle, but in practice have issues. Some metals are linked to toxicity at trace levels. So when preparing drugs, you need to be very careful about purifying out the metal contaminants. Palladium is an example of a very versatile catalytic metal that causes problems during drug manufacture. Metals can also be quite expensive. Platinum and Rhodium are used in both chemical manufacture and in automobile catalytic converters. The price of Rhodium hit $25,000/oz recently. Not all metals are this expensive, but the cost and availability are often a problem.
The awarded work uses catalysts that don't contain metals. Instead, the catalysts contain the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and possibly some other non-metal atoms. In other words, these catalysts are made of the same kinds of atoms as life. (Enzymes catalyze biological reactions.) So now there's a link between biological catalysis and artificial catalysis that didn't exist before.
This work solved a number of practical problems, really went against dogma at the time, and opened up an important area of research that intersects with big questions like the origins of life.
A bit more detail about how catalysts speed up chemical reactions - to get from products to reactants you need to climb an energy barrier to get to something called the "rate-determining transition state". What catalysts do is stabilize or reduce the amount of energy (called activation energy) required to reach this transition state, and by doing so, the reaction goes faster. The stability is achieved through interactions between the rate determining transition state and the catalyst. Sometimes the catalyst causes a change in the reaction mechanism leading to a different rate-determining transition state as well.
Layperson here. It’s my understanding that energy can neither created not destroyed. So if a reaction needs more energy otherwise, then how do catalysts provide that extra energy needed for the reaction yet not fail energy conservancy law?
I don’t think they provide the energy, they change the required energy for a reaction to occur. My understanding is that is can happen due to the physical structure of the catalyst changing the electronic configuration of the molecules being reacted. I think often instead of the two molecules coming into contact and reacting, the two molecules and the catalyst come into contact. It’s a whole different reaction, but the catalyst molecule doesn’t change its composition and is left unchanged after the reaction.
I guess maybe a terrible analogy would be you’re trying to cross a flat field but there is a large group of animals, say, cows in the way. You’d never be able to get through the crowd of cows without exerting a lot of energy. Then suddenly a dog, catalyst, come over and starts shooing off the cows. Now the cows have moved out of the way and the flat field is clear. You can now make the journey while expending less energy.
You can think of the energy of the reactants and products as valleys separated by a mountain. The "normal" reaction requires the reactants in their base energy state (the bottom of the valley) to climb up the whole mountain, thus it will be very slow. The "just add enough heat" method is like flooding the whole mountain range up to the peak -- it technically works but causes other issues. Adding a catalyst is like digging a tunnel through the mountain.
> So now there's a link between biological catalysis and artificial catalysis that didn't exist before.
Not sure I understand that point. There are plenty of enzymatic reactions that rely on metals. Presumably the point is that there exist non-metalloenzymes that catalyse enantiospecific reactions?
I believe the point is more from a relatively "simple" molecule you can have catalytic reactions that don't require metal or complex protein systems. When applied to the observation about life means that random organic compounds could have started selective catalytic reactions which could have given rise to more complex systems which then give rise to the building blocks of life or something.
This is me speculating on the meaning of the original comment, my knowledge of abiogenesis is lacking and I know RNA can do some enzymatic reactions which are also organic compounds.
With regards to abiogenesis, that is a wonderful area for wild speculation. I say that having done a tiny bit of that myself :)
Certainly it would be helpful to have small-molecule catalysts to bootstrap life into having polymer catalysts.
I just do not think it matters much about excluding metals, since there were bound to be sufficient dissolved metal ions floating around. Of course, whether they were the 'right' metals and in a suitable oxidation state and so on is a different question.
I think the importance of organocatalysts besides being potentially less "harsh" is that they can also be more selective in what reactions they allow, which would be important in getting to those polymers. For example most of the amino acids in biology are L-enantiomers. So the reaction in the primordial soup would require catalysts which would bias towards that specific shape, where as a metalocatalyst may be less specific and generate both the L and R enantiomers at equal or near equal rate. Also it could also be that metalocatalysts generate side products at a higher rate such that it consumes say some of your amino acids unhelpfully. So you may be able to think about it as an intermediate step of metals->organocatalysts->polymer catalysts.
Full Disclosure: Am not a chemist but work with chemists, one of which follows MacMillan closely. And have sat through a lot of presentations looking at how different catalysts affect selectivity of products.
What a great explanation. Id like to share this old paper on using radio frequency modulation of catalytic activity. Seems like such a neat idea—that chemical catalysts might be emulated through radio waves. Are there better examples or better ways of thinking about this?
No, I think they meant what they said: we can encounter the situation where 50% of products need to be separated out only because some molecules are chiral. (Actually their comment was extremely carefully (and well-) worded for a social media comment!)
See, in general your statement that reaction products can be mirror images of each other is true for most of the chemical reactions humanity has been able to produce in a lab/factory, yet many reactions don't require separating out 50% of the products because it doesn't matter that they're mirror images if they're non-chiral molecules. Think of the (non-chiral) letter H: a right-handed and left-handed letter H are the same -- one can always be rotated to match the other.
The only time it matters that most of our chemical reactions can produce either left- or right-handed molecules is when these molecules are actually different, meaning they cannot be rotated to match each other. Think of the (chiral in 2D) letter L. There's no way I can rotate the letter L in 2D space to make it match its mirror image. (Of course I can if I'm allowed to rotate it through 3D space.)
Thanks for this clear account. This proves that it is possible (at least occasionally) to describe a chemistry project using ordinary language to a non-chemist.
By contrast, every single chemistry poster session or talk seems instead to consist of inscrutable walls of long technical terms and impossibly convoluted flow charts. I’ve often wondered whether this really all makes perfect sense to chemists themselves? Like, if I were to surreptitiously change one syllable out of a 10-syllable word, or reverse a couple of the arrows on a flow chart, would anyone in the audience notice? If not, then why is the information being conveyed in this way, seemingly without any effort at comprehensibility?
Edit: don’t mean to condescend to chemists. The question is a genuine one. Does it really have to be so inaccessible from start to finish? Maybe yes is the answer, that’s the nature of the thing. Physics is not like that, for instance.
Would you prefer CS algorithms in papers to be written in English prose rather than pseudo code? Would you notice if your neural network diagram has its arrows reversed? I do not understand HN's superiority complex when it comes to notation. Every thread on music in this forum devolves to complaints about music notation rather than the essence of the art itself. It is disappointing.
To be clear, despite the slightly snarky tone, I don’t mean to condescend to chemists! Quite the opposite, this is borne out of disappointment when I listen to a whole chem presentation and fail to grasp even one simple idea. I’m a physicist, btw, and could easily fill a presentation with inscrutable equations but what would be the point of that? Instead I make sure that everyone (even a scientifically literate layperson) can stay on board at least the first third of the presentation.
As someone who sits on the bounds of a lot of fields, I have to say it is surprising what many scientists think are "common knowledge." So having never seen your presentation I would question whether it is even a scientific literate layperson would actually be able to follow.
I distinctly remember being in a room of biologists and having to explain that, your general STEM audience does not automatically know what a protein is. They were incredulous, but I pointed out that I had to just explain that to a computer scientist like a week prior.
For example to you as a physicist I'm sure I could casually drop the word "force field" and you would know exactly what I'm discussing but a biologist or even chemist wouldn't. But it's such a casually thrown around word in my specialty we will just use it without thinking. Similarly Newtonian physics/classical physics/etc.
> whether this really all makes perfect sense to chemists themselves?
Yes. Obviously! Someone working in a technical field will understand the jargon and notation of that field.
Certainly if you are working in (say) physical chemistry, you might not be familiar with all the terminolgy of (say) organometallic chemistry, or vice versa.
The question of whether the audience might 'notice' is more tricky, but still bizarre. Certainly, changing (say) one part of a long chemical name might escape attention, but so what?
For example, one catalyst due to the prize winners is :
if I swapped the '2,2,3-trimethyl' and the '5-phenylmethyl' parts of this, it would be likely non-standard nomenclature, and maybe someone might notice. However the information conveyed would be the same.
It might help to know these names are formed systematically.
URIs can also look inscrutable, but make more sense once you know how to break them down into scheme://user@host:port/path
Chemical names (mostly) work the same way. There are a fair number of rules and concepts, but once you understand them, the endless names map onto structures pretty cleanly[0]. Here are some of them: http://www.chem.uiuc.edu/GenChemReferences/nomenclature_rule...
[0] Mostly. There are some historical exceptions. Acetone should be called something like 2-propanone, for example, but...it isn't.
Well at least they've moved on from the days of alchemy where the tendency was to make up your own notation and jargon to obscure what you actually did :)
I have similar problems in my own field where an academic could EASILY explain the core of a problem in a few bullet points, but instead will try to cram 20 lines of dense mathematical formulation in size 8 font on a slide. It is just bad communication. That should be left in the white paper, sure, but not at a conference where 3/4 the room just starts reading email. I try to explain this to academics all the time when they're trying to communicate with industry, but few seem to get it.
Keep in mind, I'm not saying that's the same as what we're talking about in this post, but I thought you'd be interested in the personal anecdote. Clear communication is an art that takes years to master. Unfortunately, a lot of academic papers are not meant for a general audience or even an audience of non academic experts.
I share a similar skepticism of people the obfuscate the information with jargon.
Any technical field will have its jargon, but the general concept can also (almost always) be explained in a more accessible way (like the hn comment and the article's introduction do).
I've found people that rely on jargon exclusively sometimes don't actually understand the underlying concepts when you ask them questions that dig into it. It's one of the flags that someone is full of shit. Sometimes it's just targeting a narrow audience.
The space on posters is extremely limited. You condense several person-months into a few sentences and graphics, usually fewer words than OP used.
At the same time, the research is usually very narrow. It's hard but possible to convey a general concept in few words, but if you study the properties of a subclass of a subclass of a subclass of a subclass of organic chemicals, you simply have to use terms of art. You don't have the space to explain what a ligand is, or what paramagnetism is, and you don't need to anyway, because your audience likely understands the concepts better than you do.
It's when talking to people that I've noticed a difference. Some people have the jargon, but I can ask questions and learn from them because they can explain the underlying ideas.
Some just hide behind the jargon and can't answer questions - often in the latter the impression I get is that their actual knowledge is pretty shallow. It's not always the case (sometimes people are just bad at communication in general), but it's the case often enough that it's a signal.
It's also something I've noticed more in academia for whatever reason. My off the cuff guess is that both some cultural pressure towards signaling intelligence and prestige is coupled with being hard to understand, and that it's easier to hide with bullshit in academia than in industry. Not that you can't hide in industry too, but entire fields of academia that were total bullshit sometimes perpetuate for decades - companies typically die earlier than that.
Its not that they can't be explained more accessibly, its that they shouldn't.
When you talk to other practitioners its more important to be precise and succint than it is to be accessible. Just like the opposite is true when talking to the general public. Different audiences have different needs.
Some people do use excessive jargon to sound "smart" (and they are annoying). Anyone who knows what they are doing should be able to communicate in either mode depending on what the situation demands. Just because some people abuse jargon doesn't mean it doesn't have a valid place.
Don’t intend to make snap judgment (despite my unfortunate tone) — the question is a genuine one. Does it really have to be so inaccessible from start to finish? Maybe yes is the answer, that’s the nature of the thing. Physics is not like that, for instance.
I think its the nature of the thing. Some fields are easy to 'big picture' - like physics (apart from quantum-level?) or biology. If they relate to everyday experience then that is surely easier.
Chemistry often deals with the everyday, of course - drugs, paint,fuels, cooking even. However it can also deal with very obscure reactions where the details are entirely technical.
For example, there are whole papers dedicated to "this is the detailed series of steps we found to make this obscure chemical (X) that is difficult to make". That could be summarised as just "we made X!" - not super interesting, by itself...
There is a section on the page called "Read more about this year’s prize" that contains links to a technical and a more accessible description that might easily be missed. If you want to know more, here are they for your convenience.
I'm surprised that it's only MacMillan and List for organocatalysis. There's plenty of others that come to mind, like Jacobsen.
Regarding MacMillan, his student used proline (which opened the whole proline organocatalysis area) and he said he had "no idea why she did that experiment". He definitely guides his students well.
In this case "a ton" is an understatement, getting a Nobel requires the right mix of excellent research, significant discovery and a healthy dose of luck/timing.
Inverting the comment that you were replying to it's akin to saying "I wish I had finished my software engineer degree and made a billion dollar startup instead of getting a chemistry PhD".
"Institute for coal research" - German science marketing really leaves a lot to be desired. Never would I have guessed that inside such a lab top science happens.
Keep in mind coal research was HUGE in organic chemistry. It was a major source of precursors like aromatic hydrocarbons which fed the dye industry which was the origination of organic chemistry (it led to the sulfonamide antibiotics).
Germany absolutely dominated organic chemistry in the late 1800s/early 1900s. It was the place to be to do organic chemistry. Many of the top organic chemistry journals today (Angewandte Chemie) are still topic tier journals for researchers.
The name dates back to 1912 when the institute was founded. Today it is run by Max-Planck-Society, a top-notch research association. The last time someone at a Max Planck institute received a Nobel Prize before this one was ... yesterday.
I consider it a feature and not a bug that we don't slap hollywood-esque name onto research. it studies carbon/coal, it's the coal research centre, it does what is says on the label
marketing is how you get 'autopilots' driving over people (a label that also happens to be banned here in advertisement)
Catalysts make reactions go faster and are not consumed during the reaction. There are molecules that are mirror images of one another. It was thought that there were only two types of catalysts that could help with those: enzymes and metal catalysts. The laureates discovered a third type that is easier to work with and outperforms the other methods. It is in wide use now.
(Edit: that turned out to be pretty ELI5 actually. Proceeds to build mirrored molecules from Lego bricks...)
Organic synthesis is about making new molecules that haven't existed before. That's important for developing new drugs, improved batteries, better plastics, etc.
Organic molecules are networks of atoms, with both a distinct connectivity pattern, and a specific 3D orientation [1] of the atoms to each other. See e.g. the Wikipedia page of Lipitor[2] a picture of the connectivity pattern.
We build these molecules through chemical reactions. Over time, we have become pretty good at creating the connectivity patterns we want. However, achieving the correct 3D arrangement is still challenging.
List and MacMillan developed new chemical reactions that enable us to get both the connectivity, and the 3D aspect right. Such new methods are frequent Nobel contenders, and won e.g. in 2001 with Knowles/Noyori/Sharpless.
As for how these reactions work: it is true that they are catalyst-based and that catalysts speed up reactions, but that perspective is a bit misleading. The key point is that without catalysts, these reactions would not happen at all. So the catalysts List&MacMillan found accelerate some desirable reactions so much that they turn from "practically doesn't happen at all" to "done in an hour".
Congratulations to the outstanding work, and to the Nobel price!
Somewhat surprised asymmetric organocatalysis was awarded over asymmetric photocatalysis or photoredox chemistry. Photocatalysis is newer, has more demonstrated use cases, and holds more promise.
Would I argue that the societal value of Amazon is actually huge (AUC-wise). Amazon positively impacts all of it's employees, consumers as well as other companies (my company wouldn't exists if AWS hadn't paved the wave for cheap cloud computing).
Anyway, it is certainly a mistake to equate generating socieltal value with financial gains. In many settings there is a strong positive correlation (Amazon IMO), others where it's weak (research) and yet others where it's negative (drug dealing).
What? Besos can sell his stocks in a few months and turn it into cash. Even if he can't sell everything, let's say he can "only" get 50B in a few months. Eventually he will be able to sell it all if he wants to, there are buyers. Even his ex wife is now one of the richest women in the world so...
The prize is about artificial catalysts. A catalyst is a substance that speeds up a reaction without being consumed. Another way to speed reactions up is to heat them, but that consumes energy and often leads to by-products that must be removed and disposed of.
The "asymmetric" part has to do with one kind of by-product. Some reactions produce 50% of a by-product that must be separated out and disposed of. This happens because some molecules have 3D structure that's different than its mirror image. Think of the way that certain objects like bottle caps and screws only turn one way to tighten. Molecules can have that property (including many drugs you may have taken), and if the handedness is wrong, in many applications, it's a by-product and/or poison. An asymmetric catalyst can make molecules of one handedness selectively, saving material, money, and energy.
The "organocatalysis" part has to do with what the catalyst is made of. Prior to the awardee's research, catalysts tended to contain metal atoms. A few Nobels have been awarded for catalytic processes that use metals.
So metals are great in principle, but in practice have issues. Some metals are linked to toxicity at trace levels. So when preparing drugs, you need to be very careful about purifying out the metal contaminants. Palladium is an example of a very versatile catalytic metal that causes problems during drug manufacture. Metals can also be quite expensive. Platinum and Rhodium are used in both chemical manufacture and in automobile catalytic converters. The price of Rhodium hit $25,000/oz recently. Not all metals are this expensive, but the cost and availability are often a problem.
The awarded work uses catalysts that don't contain metals. Instead, the catalysts contain the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and possibly some other non-metal atoms. In other words, these catalysts are made of the same kinds of atoms as life. (Enzymes catalyze biological reactions.) So now there's a link between biological catalysis and artificial catalysis that didn't exist before.
This work solved a number of practical problems, really went against dogma at the time, and opened up an important area of research that intersects with big questions like the origins of life.