Research Highlights
Agapie Group
Making Plastic from Carbon Dioxide, Water, and Electricity
Reporting in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Agapie and a team of Caltech chemists have developed a system that uses electricity from sustainable sources to carry out what is known as artificial photosynthesis—the chemical conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) into molecules that are useful for making more complex compounds such as ethylene and carbon monoxide without plants. The new system then feeds those chemicals into a second catalytic loop that yields industrially useful plastics called polyketones, which are known for their strength, durability, and thermal stability, making them ideal for applications ranging from adhesives to car parts and from sports equipment to industrial piping.
Cushing Lab
Dynamic Competition between Hubbard and Superexchange Interactions Selectively Localizes Electrons and Holes through Polarons
In addition to understanding how strong electronic and spin correlations can control strong electron–phonon coupling, these experiments separately measure electron and hole polaron interactions on neighboring metal centers for the first time, providing insight into a large range of charge-transfer and Mott–Hubbard insulators.
Hoelz Lab
Novel Approaches for Protecting the Inner Ear from Hearing Loss
Andre Hoelz and Rick Friedman, the latter a skull base surgeon who operated on Hoelz's auditory nerve, have received a Curebound grant to pioneer new ways of protecting the inner ear against hearing loss.
Over the last five years, Hoelz, Friedman, and other scientists in the field have identified a gene that makes people more susceptible to hearing loss—whether from noise, cisplatin, or age—and started exploring ways to strengthen the inner ear hair cells (IHC) to protect hearing.
Hoelz and Friedman have shown that they can in fact protect IHCs, and the hearing that relies on them, if an AMPK (5' adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase)-activating drug is properly delivered prior to cisplatin treatment. With a grant from Curebound, a philanthropic organization based in San Diego that funds cancer research, they are now learning the correct dosage and timing required to protect the hearing of cisplatin-treated cancer patients.
Nelson Lab
Microcrystal Electron Diffraction-Guided Discovery of Fungal Metabolites
Nature remains a vast repository of complex and functional metabolites whose structural characterization continues to drive innovations in pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and materials science. The cryogenic electron microscopy (cryoEM) method, microcrystal electron diffraction (microED, a 3D ED technique), has emerged as a powerful tool to structurally characterize small molecules. Despite this emerging role in structural chemistry, the cost and throughput of microED have limited its application in the discovery of natural products (NPs). While recent advances in sample preparation (e.g., arrayED) have provided a conceptual framework to address these challenges, they have remained unproven. Herein, we report the arrayED-driven discovery of a structurally unprecedented family of NPs (zopalides A–E), a muurolane-type sesquiterpene glycoside (rhytidoside A), aspergillicin analogs (aspergillicins H and I), and four crystal structures of previously reported fungal metabolites. Lastly, this the first time that the absolute stereo configuration of newly discovered NPs has been determined directly by microED alone without other methods using a small amount of sample
Sharma Group
New Hybrid Quantum–Classical Computing Approach Used to Study Chemical Systems
Professor Sandeep Sharma and colleagues from IBM and the RIKEN Center for Computational Science in Japan are giving us a glimpse of the future of computing. The team has used quantum computing in combination with classical distributed computing to attack a notably challenging problem in quantum chemistry—determining the electronic energy levels of a relatively complex molecule. The work demonstrates the promise of such a quantum–classical hybrid approach for advancing not only quantum chemistry but also fields such as materials science, nanotechnology, and drug discovery, where insight into the electronic fingerprint of materials can reveal how they will behave.