Choatic Order of the Mind

To all the chemists and chemistry-enthusiasts!

“It’s just a phase”

me: I’m happily childfree.

“You’ll change your mind”

me: I’m an atheist.

“You’ll find your way to *insert god* some day”

As the world’s premier winter athletes were preparing to take to the slopes, rinks and tracks for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, Florida State University researchers were hard at work making a gold-medal discovery of their own.

More than 7,000 miles away from the snowcapped peaks of PyeongChang, scientists from FSU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry unlocked a novel strategy for synthesizing a highly versatile molecule called olympicene—a compound of carbon and hydrogen atoms named for its familiar shape.

“An olympicene is a molecule consisting of five rings that resemble the shape of the famous Olympic rings,” said Cottrell Family Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Igor Alabugin. “This new process for synthesizing these molecules offers a unique tool for the preparation of structurally precise carbon-rich nanostructures.”

#HolocaustRemembranceDay

Scientific Breakthrough Could Lead to Better Antipsychotic Drugs 

Researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine and University of California San Francisco (UCSF) have provided the first high-resolution crystal structure of the dopamine 2 receptor (DRD2) bound to the antipsychotic drug risperidone, which will allow researchers to selectively activate DRD2 limiting the side effects of antipsychotic drugs.

“If we want to create better medications, the first step is to see what the D2 receptor looks like in high-resolution detail when it’s bound tightly to a drug,” said senior author Bryan L. Roth, MD, PhD, the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor of Protein Therapeutics and Translational Proteomics at the UNC School of Medicine. “We now have the structure, and we’re exploring it to find new compounds we hope can help the millions of people in need of better treatments.”

Read more

Funding: The National Institutes of Health funded this work.