Board games - science style

Last week I was at Spiel, the largest board game convention of Europe in Essen, Germany. I played a shed load of board games with concepts ranging from collecting the most bananas to hanging up life sized washing. I also played a couple games with a scientific theme, which is a rare event in the board gaming world.

Can you save humanity?

One game that I played at the convention is really going viral at the moment (pun intended). This was Pandemic: Contagion. The game is a spin off from the board game Pandemic and you play as a specific disease attempting to rid the world of that troublesome humanity.

Whilst diseases are of course not sentient beings, it is a pretty novel idea to take on the role an infection. The game itself was ok, it didn't grab me at the first play, but maybe it will grow on me (yes, another intended pun). What I did really like with the game was the artwork, as accurate as you ever get with cartoon viruses. The components were also really cool as you get to play with petri dishes and to hold a fist full of viruses.

The original Pandemic is one of my favourite board games ever. A cooperative game where you fight the diseases together as a crack team of operatives and scientists, this time to save humanity! Again, the artwork is great and the four diseases are kinda realistic representations of microbes and viruses. The "Scientist"" character is also a fine example of promoting diversity in science, a white coated lady analysing her latest data. There are also a couple expansions to the base Pandemic game, one being called In the Lab. I've not played it myself but understand that here you can take a pause from racing around the world to enter the laboratory and develop new cures, cool!

Stereotypical spies

Another game I played at Spiel was the party game Spyfall. In this Russian produced game (just saying) there is of course a spy, who must uncover the location of the other players, whilst they each attempt to unmask the spy. The players are given cards with a location on them, one of which being a university. Now a university has many different departments as well as countless other student hangouts and from all these options Spyfall chooses to use a science lab. I say "science lab" as I'm actually not quite sure if it is a chemistry lab or more like a botanist's greenhouse. So let's just say it is something in the biological sciences area.

Unfortunately, the creators of Spyfall decided to go for the stereotypical depiction of an old crazy scientist for their game. The spy in the picture is disguised with a wig of white unkempt hair. One further point is that if this was a real situation then the spy would instantly be caught. Anyone that has worked in a university lab will know, old professors never set foot in the labs and would certainly not be seen getting their hands dirty doing some actual research.

An old board game that surely everyone knows is Cluedo. One of the characters/suspects in this game is Professor Plum. This learned man was first depicted as an absent minded, aged scientist. Not really pushing the imagination of the players here or indeed the boundaries of science. The character has, however, gone through a number of transformations over the years in different editions. His job has varied from archaeologist to psychiatrist to video game designer. In the latest interpretation he has lost his academic title and with it has perhaps lost the chance to persuade generations more of impressionable young scientists to solve murders, perhaps.

The portrayal of scientists in board games has come a long way since Plum's days but maybe still has a way to go. I do really believe that chemistry and science is a massively under used theme for games. What could be more fun than beating your friends in the hunt to synthesise a new molecule or to write the best grant proposal, oh yeah I see it now. If anyone else knows of any other science themed board games then please let me know, I'd love to try them out.

The making of a cover

I'm on the cover! One of my scientific ambitions has just been fulfilled.

From the moment I began my PhD I had but one aim... finish the PhD. Well I managed that last year, but I also had other ambitions for my scientific career and one of them was to have my work featured on a journal cover. The first time I dived into the scientific literature and saw these cover designs, I knew straight away that I had found my calling in life. Ok, so this is a slight exaggeration, but I do think they are really cool.

Authors use all sorts of ways to demonstrate their work visually. But obviously some fields of research lend themselves more easily to the use of pretty pictures than others. My work with protein interactions was certainly one of these areas.

The first sketch

It was in July last year that I had a break through. My proteins were binding in the way that I wanted and things were finally all coming together. As a quick summary, the work involved attaching 5 carbohydrates to a non-toxic mutant of the cholera toxin protein. That modified protein could then be used as an inhibitor of matching size to the original toxin. The carbohydrates of the inhibitor bind to the wild-type cholera toxin, therefore inhibiting the wild-type from sticking to your cells.

I was sat in the back of a seminar a week or so after getting my latest results, when my thoughts wandered onto how I could visualise the work. In my mind there was only one way to show the interactions and that was by anthropomorphising the proteins. I sketched down a first rough cartoon. The noble inhibitor was obviously going to try to catch the evil toxin. I don't remember much of the seminar, but I think this was still time well spent.

The modified protein, our hero, had 5 large arms to catch the bad guy, oh and a police badge giving him the authority to hunt down these no-good toxins. As for his nemesis, well this guy had to wear the stereotypical black stripes and face mask of a robber as well as holding onto a swag bag to keep all his loot. As if this did not yet make it completely clear that he was not to be trusted, he also has evil eyebrows, a sure sign of a villain.

My initial sketch was not complete fantasy. The 5 arms represented the addition of carbohydrates to the protein. The swag bag represented for the toxic subunit that the wild-type protein possesses. The big googly eyes represented, oh no wait, they were just big googly eyes.

Writing the paper for this work was put on a list of things to do for quite a while and with it went the protein policeman. I was away at international conferences (holidays), I then had my thesis to write and after that a change of country. So it wasn't until February that the first draft of the paper appeared and as with any publication, a TOC (table of contents) image was needed. Here, the protein enemies resurfaced.

From notebook to TOC

The cholera toxin protein is fairly well known, with many crystal structures. Therefore, it was quite an easy task to scan through the protein data bank and pick out a nice structure as a starting point. A ribbon representation of the protein structure was chosen to start with as I believe this is the most recognisable protein depiction. Using Pymol, I then built in the alkane chains and added the carbohydrates around the protein. There was no choice for the colours, there is a standard scheme in the Turnbull lab; red = cholera toxin, orange = non-toxic mutant. The proteins were structurally accurate, the eyes and mouths were added for effect.

The initial design got the thumbs up from the lab group although it certainly needed a little refining. So after trying a few different positions and angles, the protein ribbon was changed in favour of a surface representation and a decent image was taking shape. The mask was added back in for the villain. A whistle and a police badge were given to our hero. Not the most serious piece of work, but we were confident that the actual research was good enough so that we could relax a little with a silly image.

From TOC to cover

I really wanted to try for a journal cover. We had some great work (I thought) and a great idea to build the TOC image into a full picture. The paper had been submitted to Angewandte and so the image had to be based on their standard circular design.

We went through 15 versions of bacteria for a background. Red, yellow and blue bacteria, some more realistic than others. I also tried out a Petri dish with bacteria growing across the plate but a consensus was made for an image with some large green bugs. The proteins stood out in the foreground and the colours worked well. Bacteria was used because the work is about protein modification and binding, and of course we couldn't perform any of the work (or have need to) without some little E. coli factories churning out all that protein.

A final change was to put some actual science into the image. Straight through the middle, separating the two enemies is a curve from one of the ELLA (enzyme-linked lectin assay) experiments reported in the paper. It gives the inhibitory potential of our good guy binding to the baddie. A fitting central divide.

All the best pictures have something a little bit ambiguous about them and here I feel that confusion is provided subtly by the police badge. The acronym refers to the top detective agency at Leeds University. CTPD, of course, standing for the Cholera Toxin Police Department. At this institution they only hire the most specialised proteins to catch the toxins.

The paper was accepted with great reviews and even recommended as a VIP paper. Excellent news! After much celebration we submitted the cover design. The editors were very quick to respond and accepted our image. More excellent news! I was amazed by how incredibly smoothly everything had gone. For my first first-author research paper this was fantastic.

I'm not sure if the image is quite bad enough to make it into TOCROFL, that will be the aim for my next paper. And after that my next scientific ambition is to get an SI unit named after myself, so we'll see how that works out.

You can find the paper "here" and our awesome cover design "here".

That love-hate supervisor relationship

 
What? I've not even started this blog post yet and you've already got a problem.

Supervisors

A mentor, a role model, a leader, a helping hand. These are all terms that could describe that voice of reason encouraging your next step. But when it came to reports and manuscripts, my supervisor always made me see red. Red pen that is.

Just wait a minute I'll get on to it soon.

 

No, I'm saying what you did. That's the point.

My PhD supervisor kept a certain red pen that he saved especially for colouring in my reports. Don't get me wrong, I was very grateful for all the feedback and insightful comments. Only it was sometimes quite hard to pick out the wise words amongst all the scribbles that appeared in the margins, on the figures and generally in any part of the paper with the smallest bit of blank space available. I spent hours writing up my work and of course felt some pride when presenting good results. All I ever wanted was just the smallest sign of approval, a pat on the back, a simple 'well done'.

Thanks! Finally some approval.

Ok I'll move on.

Corrections

Thanks to comments from my supervisor, I have learnt the proper use of a semicolon and when it is wise to avoid 74 word sentences. I'm sure (I'm almost sure) that he always wanted the best for me, but the criticism sometimes gets hard to take. Yes, he has years more experience than me, but come on, when was the last time he did a real experiment? There's no way he could still actually get in the lab and create the data that I was producing, right?

What! But I think you actually mean "your data are crap"?

 Are you sure? It looks correct to me.

Ok, ok. Maybe I'll scrap it all. I should never have started this blog post in the first place.

I actually had a very good working relationship with my supervisor and he tells me it was only for this reason that he felt able to fully unleash when it came to marking my work. Likewise, I was comfortable taking the criticism, knowing (hoping) that it would only make my writing better in the end.

I wanted to end by pointing out your obvious superiority and how indebted I am for all your help...

Thanks, thought I would just give it a stab and see where it went.

What?!

Pint of Science

Last week the pubs were even more crowded than usual. Not because of a special drinks offer, but instead to meet a group of scientists. Across 6 countries and in 21 cities, everyone was enjoying their “Pint of Science”. Guest blogger Amanda helped organise the event in York and is here to explain all.

To the pub

Almost a year ago I received an email looking for volunteers to help organise an international outreach festival, Pint of Science. The event combined two of my favourite things, hearing about exciting new research and going to the pub! It later became apparent this wasn’t going to be a small event. The festival was running 12 events within each city involved, over 3 evenings. Last year, Pint of Science was run in London, Oxford and Cambridge, stimulating and engaging the public about current research and why science is relevant to their everyday lives. Now, a team of York postgraduates were challenged with extending the festival up to the north of England.

What really excited me about the festival was removing science outreach events from lacklustre venues and into a relaxed environment that is well known for fuelling the generation of many great scientific ideas. For example, James Watson admitted that many crucial discussions between him and Crick were at pubs in Cambridge during their discovery of the DNA alpha helix.

In the 10 months leading up to the event we put together a programme of talks covering all areas of science. The talks included mind reading using MRI, plasma science as sustainable energy sources and fish and (computer) chips for understanding Parkinson’s disease.

My personal highlight was a talk at Brigantes bar, given by Professor Dave Smith, a previous lecturer of mine and famous for his YouTube videos. In “From G&T to TLC – how chemistry helps you feel better”, he demonstrated the healing properties of tonic water, and his own research on gene delivery using self-assembly techniques in an engaging an interactive talk. Other highlights across the pubs in York included a very large and loud plasma reactor and a Gangnam Style dancing robot!

A great success of the festival was the interaction between the audience and the speakers. The informal environment really encouraged discussions around the topics being presented, with a pint in hand.

Musical science and mini engineering

They never disappoint. They never fail to impress. There's always one that will make a smile appear on the face of even the most miserable of chemists. Of course, I'm talking about the fabulous cover art of Angewandte. (I should get paid for saying these things, er hey Angewandte if you are reading this...)

If you ever tire of scanning through yet another table of contents, then pop over to Angewandte for a quick peek at their gallery of cover art. Every week they put out not just one, but five covers! Because as we all know, a magazine obviously has five fronts. Well, there's the actual front, the inside front, the inside out, the back, the front back, the back to front, oh and probably some others... But this week there were a couple that caught my eye and surely the eyes of every miniature scientist out there in journal land.

Musical chemicals

Firstly, there was the appearance of some wonderfully entertaining chemicals. Two pairs of blue and yellow guanine musicians just don't seem to be able to get the hang of their instruments. Struggling together, they are actually looking quite bored. Perhaps this is because they are only cartoons with no musical knowledge, or just maybe it is because they are missing the input of a little dancing blue circle! With the crowd now joining in, the duets bond together to form a quartet and everyone is happy again.

What a fantastic analogy this is for the conversion of GG base pairs into guanine-quadruplex structures after interacting with cations (our little blue friend). The best part of this cover by far is the couple of gate crashers at the bottom, trying to catch a glimpse of the show - but sorry, they've already bonded, no room for you guys.

Chemical engineering

The second cover this week showed off some little chemical builders. With their little hard hats, their little hammers and tiny walkie talkies, surely this is how synthesis will really happen in the near future. These engineers have been working away on an old worn out porphyrin ring and have converted it into a new shiny carbaporphyrinoid. Now take away that pyrrole ring and throw it on the molecular scrap heap. The first structure of its kind and made by mini (more like angstrom sized) scientists, what's not to love.

Blogoversary

I forgot my own 1 year blogoversary...

It passed without thought back in February. Although it wasn't until around this time last year that I really got into the community and with the explosion of #RealTimeChem, things took off (in a small humble way).

So a big congrats to Chemically Cultured and many happy returns. May your writing run free and uninhibited, may your comments be forever witty and insightful, and may your rants never fail to cross the line into irrelevance and absurdity.

Elemental errors

Every writer should be prepared to take a step back sometimes, hold their hands up and say "I'm sorry, I was wrong". Some startling information has just come to my attention and I feel compelled to share it. If this misjudgement on my behalf leads to a loss of trust, I understand and I thank those of you who still support me.

Last year I wrote a post about one of my favourite films and how it was almost perfect. Avatar is that film and there was one aspect that saddened me and which I deemed to be a major flaw in the film. This flaw was enough to take away that 5th star from the rating, to knock it off the top of the all time great list. 

Not so ridiculous after all

Therefore now, with much pleasure, I can announce that Avatar has been rerated and is now deemed perfect. Hooray! Yes I know it has giant blue people and floating mountains, but let's move on. Avatar centres on the hunt for unobtainium. That wonderfully named element, that unprecocious and most mature name for an element was previously my focus of distaste. But I now embrace the simplicity and accuracy with which the name came about.

You see, there are already not one but two elements, real elements, that have names as ridiculous as our unobtainium and  I have shamefully only just uncovered this informationfound. These culprits are lanthanum and dysprosium. These two elements, however, escape the derision and ridicule that was focussed on unobtainium simply because they are not English words. Lanthanum comes from the Greek meaning "to be hidden" and dysprosium, also from the Greek, meaning "hard to get".

So why don't we have hiddenium and hardtogetium on the periodic table? Well, quite frankly it's probably because they are stupid names that everyone would laugh at. But why should we laugh? Those names simply describe a property of the elements. Why do scientists feel the need to use fancy obsolete languages to describe the world? Is the universe not grand enough by itself? What's wrong with plain old English? Maybe if the names were in a more common language then it might make the science a little more informative and a little more accessible to the non-Greek speaking community.

Revamp for the shining dawn

Therefore I have decided to revamp a few other elements that would benefit from a new name. Bromine is the first one, named from the Greek for stench (because it smells bad) and so I will henceforth refer to it simply as stinkium. Another that needs changing is technetium. The name sounds quite futuristic, rather technical and that would be because it is radioactive and is not often found naturally. The man-made version has been around for less than 100 years and the name comes from the Greek for artificial. So this element will now be called fake-ium. Finally, there is gold. Yes gold, that most precious of metals has the chemical symbol Au, which is short for aurum (from Latin this time) meaning "shining dawn". So the next time somebody flashes their new jewellery at you just tell them what a nice piece of shinyum they have.

p.s.
I couldn't end this post without mentioning that sometimes using obscure words and languages can be beneficial to avoid embarrassment. Copper nanotubes really could do with a new name. Although Cu does originally come from the Latin...

Arrr! A treasure map in Chem. Eur. J.!

Avast, me hearties! If there be one thing true 'bout academic journals, it is that there be not enough pirates involved. But lucky for us landlubbers, Chem. Eur. J. has put that to right with their latest cover. A treasure map! Aye and what a beauty she be.

This here map plots us a route well travelled by many. From the heart of that great land Europe, out to the wilds of the new colonies in the USA. I don't recommend using this depiction for your explorations though, the USA seems to have moved to where Africa traditionally lies. Nevertheless a great adventure it must be and anyway the map was charted by chemists not sailors.

The real excitement, as any good buccaneer knows, is of course in the hunt for treasure. This map takes us from a bislactim-ether, across the daring seas towards the final goal of tRNA. Along the way an unusual array of sea monsters present themselves, no sharks, krakens or even an octacoss, but instead those pesky amino acid intermediates and tRNA precursors. A healthy display of obstacles to overcome that only the bravest should attempt and which make any great journey even more rewarding. I can only hope that this discovery opened up chests full of funding for these fortune hunters...

But whatever happened to those great experimentalists of the seven seas, why are they all confined to landlocked labs nowadays? How do you think Blackbeard kept away all the grey hairs for so long? He was one of the first eminent colour chemists. Why do you think pirates were so obsessed with gold? They were all seafaring alchemists. What about the wooden legs and fondness for parrots? Well, some of them liked to branch out into prosthetics and zoology of course.

The Paper: The synthesis of Methylated, Phosphorylated, and Phosphonated 3'-Aminoacyl-tRNA^sec Mimics
Found at: Chem. Eur. J. 2013, 19, 15872-15878

A new synthetic route is mapped out by this transatlantic team. The group wished to probe the enzymatic mechanism for the biosynthesis of selenocysteine (sec), which is the only amino acid to be synthesized on its related transfer RNA (tRNA). They prepared complex tRNA^sec mimics that were methylated, phosphorylated and phosphonated, with an important amide bond from the ribose moiety that is crucially hydrolysis-resistant. The team wanted to develop these stable structures to gain more insight into the catalytic mechanism for the formation of selenocysteine by methods such as X-ray crystallography.

I'm sure much rum was consumed on the way to creating this little gem but the actual paper has absolutely no mention of buried treasure or pirates at all. The only map they use is 4-dimethylaminopyridine (DMAP), very disappointing indeed. Arr!

The walking viral-microbial-fungal dead

I've just finished watching the first season of "The Walking Dead", yes I know, where have I been, there are already 4 seasons so hey no spoilers everyone. But what a series it is! Exciting stuff and I can't wait to spend another 12 hours today getting through the 2nd season.

The zombies will be amongst us once more for this year's Halloween. Tonight will bring the rise of pasty white faces, fake blood and calls for "braaaaains". Thankfully, not the actual flesh eating, party spoiling type but more the we like to get our drunk on kind. But what is it that makes those guys on The Walking Dead so antisocial?

The last two episodes of the first season gave us a big insight into the science behind the zombification that has plagued the world. The team end up at the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) where Dr Jenner is the last scientist standing. He seems to have a pretty neat set-up with voice activated computers and a top notch lab. So good is his equipment that through a standard bench top microscope he can see DNA. Yes DNA, that stuff in everyone's cells that is only a few billionths of a millimetre thick. Wow, I only wish I had access to that kind of kit. He later shows the other guys a video of Test Subject 19, with the "MRI virtual camera" and we see the brain activity dying out and coming back before he shoots a bullet through the patient's head. He fired a gun in an MRI machine! That could not have done the equipment much good, no wonder they hadn't made much progress.

Despite the cutting edge work that was obviously possible at the CDC, Dr Jenner admitted that they didn't really know anything. "It could microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal ... or the wrath of god!" Well, from the earlier microscope view I'd put my money on viral. Other (real) viral diseases like HIV and influenza are so difficult to treat due to the complicated nature of how they attack cells and mutations constantly altering them. Viruses are of course not treatable with common antibiotics and without proper hospitals available the infection will no doubt kill you fairly quickly. Luckily for us, in a "real" zombie attack, all that rotting flesh would fall prey to Nature's excellent ability to clean up the dead.

These scenes really made me laugh out loud. A nice attempt by the show to bring some actual science to it that was maybe lacking but maybe not needed. Always fun to see them try though and can only be a good thing for making people aware of current (more likely far in the future) technology and that in an apocalypse science is still very important. Also if you want to do research whilst the world is ending, then go to France, apparently those guys can last the longest.

What am I on about?

Seriously, what on earth am I going on about?

When trying to get your point across, have a debate or tell a story it is very important to say the right words. Communication is all about language and used well can be an incredibly powerful tool.

First some common words

I wanted to have a look at the language I've been using on this blog and see if I'm saying the right things or in fact (more likely) saying some very strange things. I thought that a quick trip over to Wordle, a nice website for making fancy word displays, could tell me what I wanted to know. The 75 most frequently used words from my last 10 blog posts are displayed below.

The most obvious and bizarre thing is that I apparently say first an awful lot! I say first more than any other word. Why? I don't see second in the wordle. Maybe I don't think second is important. Maybe I get so distracted with the first thing that I ramble on and then start talking about other questions like oh look questions is pretty big on the picture too.

Science is up there, journal, work, cover (I do talk about covers a lot) but there are other surprising big ones such as one. When do I say one? Am I talking about unique occurrences or again get bored after the first? I'd like to see more superlatives being used. Great is there, but I have much better words than that in my vocabulary. I think science is wonderful and we should use equally wonderful words to describe the amazing world we live in.

There's no point doing ground breaking work and not telling anyone about it and that's where words come in. Language can not only be useful but also fun. Playing around with your split infinitives can allow you to boldly go where no scientist has gone before.

Birthday celebrations

This week is my birthday. Woohoo! I'm now into my late 20s, one step closer to death...

Birthday covers

To celebrate my constant loss of brain cells and the failure of my DNA to replicate properly, I thought I'd have a look at another big birthday that happened this year. My favourite journal, Angewandte Chemie, celebrated 125 years of publication.

To celebrate the occasion a gathering of the great and the good was held in Berlin earlier this year. Backs were patted and many nice things were said, including a piece from Stuart Cantrill with some interesting trivia. The journal started as a magazine for industrial chemists published in German, the journal title itself translating as 'applied chemistry'. English readers had to wait until 1962. The journal has actually been going for 126 years but had a year off in 1946 due to the war. So with 125 years of published articles, the covers in January were fittingly congratulatory; fireworks and champagne all round. The Issue: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 1-466  (notably open access).

The original cover

There really is a lot to celebrate for the guys at Angewandte. They've been at the forefront of the evolution of journals over the past 50 years especially. They were the first chemistry journal to introduce graphical abstracts and also the first journal to have pictures on the covers. Before this there was simply a list of featured articles and other journals at the time just started straight off with a table of contents.

The January issue in 1977 was a breakthrough. Scientists now had a platform to paint a picture worth a thousand words. Ok, they weren't as flamboyant as the fireworks quite yet, but a massive leap it must have been.

The paper: Experimental Electron Densities and Chemical Bonding
Found at: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 16, 32-40, 1977

Taking a look at that first cover, all I can say is, wow! What on earth is going on there? To start with, it's in black and white (colour wasn't invented until 1986). A pretty simple picture compared with today's outings but pretty intriguing for a first attempt. There are some contours which suggests an energy landscape with peaks between the, presumably, atoms of C, C and N.

The paper is all about electron densities and quite frankly is way out of my field. But I was right with the contour map, so go me! Taken out of the paper the caption for the image states, "Deformation density in the plane of the three-membered ring of 2,3:5,6-bisepimino-p-benzoquinone at 143 K." Well that certainly clears everything up.

As we've seen, things have moved along significantly. There have also been a few surprises along the way, a humorous cover from 1987 used cartoon acrobats to demonstrate radical chemistry. Perhaps Angewandte should also be congratulated as the original place for TOC ROFL.

Chemical poetry

This week on Twitter has been all about Real Time Chem, if you've somehow missed it then you are spending too much time in the lab.

 

Real Time Chem is a great community project on Twitter using the hashtag #RealTimeChem. Chemists all over the world have been sharing their daily experiences, lab work, cool articles and finding solace in the fact that they are not the only one failing to purify that unknown black mess.

Amongst other things this week, I have been doing some isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC). A wonderful technique (when it works) of measuring the binding enthalpies and association constants for non-covalent interactions. It's one of my favourite pieces of kit to use; it can give great insight into the success (or failure) of synthesised ligands and makes some pretty graphs.

 
After setting the experiment going I had about 30 minutes to procrastinate before the run was finished. So the internet gets fired up and through a strange connection of aimless link clicking, on websites including "Facebook", "Chemistry World" and "Jet2 cheap flights" (possibly not in that order), I came across Nobel prize winner Roald Hoffmann. Whilst obviously being a great scientist, Professor Hoffmann is also the author of a large number of poems. Some of his work focuses on chemistry and I thought what a fantastic medium poetry is for expressing the wonder and excitement of uncovering nature. I'm sure it would work equally well for portraying the torment and anguish at failed reactions, but let's stick to the wonder for now.

Back at the ITC, a flash of inspiration hit me and I came up with a poem all about the technique...


Isothermal Titration Calorimetry

Separate they contemplate their lives alone
But this the only thought they share
Not knowing their worlds are about to collide
Never loneliness will they again bear

One passively waits for an injection of life
Floating in their own little cell
The other poised to mix at the first chance
That stirring sensation will tell

But it takes another to set their paths
One who knows what makes them attract
To turn up the temperature, wait for the calm
Push the right buttons, see them interact

An initial touch, not sure where it will lead
At first you can never quite know
But a second feel, a larger reach
The heat given off starts to show

As if they had always been as one
They're together and will never part
The creator watches his successful work
Plotting their lives as a chart

Their story lives on for others to see
An example for anyone that looks
To find a guest for that elusive host
Written down in the wisest of books

The Octacoss!

The Octacoss is upon us! Run for your lives... A recent cover from OBC introduces the latest terror to be unearthed from the depths of the seven scientific seas.

Watch out the Octacoss is about

This new monster is staring with unblinking eyes, piercing the soul of any unsuspecting readers. But you'd soon forgive him any harm done, as he is rather cute.

The little pink guy is wrapping his far-reaching tentacles around a number of useful objects found lying on the bed of any well stocked laboratory sea. Coral dendrimers; often showing fascinating fractal patterns which may increase the tentacle's reach. Starfish labels; not the usual prey of our 8-legged friends and so instead used undoubtedly as a tool (perhaps a ninja throwing star). Anchor linkers; holding the beast in place and catching any passersby hook, line and sinker.

Boldly displayed on his chest, the creature is showing off a rather geeky tattoo. A chemical schematic of a silsesquioxane with the 8 branches shooting off down his 8 tentacles. The artists have given a wonderfully fun, if not overly dramatic representation of their cubic structure. However, we should now be considering whether a journal cover is the right place to show such ridiculous images. As other academics are likely to be the only people viewing it, will it interest them? There are not many chances for this kind of expression in a field that is often overly serious about itself and so in my opinion, yes, why not have a bit of fun. It's big, it's bold, it's a little bit silly, but it definitely draws you in and it sent me looking up what these silsesquithingys are all about.

Putting the Octa in Octacoss

The Paper: Bioconjugation on cube-octameric silsesquioxanes
Found at: Org. Biomol. Chem., 2013, 11, 2224-2236

The article is a review of recent advances in the modification of these highly symmetric structures. COSS are cube-octameric silsesquioxanes, therefore OCTACOSS are octa cube-octameric silsesquioxanes. The authors seem to have developed an all too common case of RAS syndrome.

It is the biochemical elements in this review that make it stand out (as well as the delightful octopus). COSS are not particularly new structures having first been synthesised in 1955. But the functionalisation and recent biological applications are importantly highlighted.

The high stability and low toxicity of the core structures is discussed in the article. Particular attention is then paid by the authors to the bioconjugation and self-assembly of glycoclusters for studying lectin binding and the use of dendrimer constructs for drug delivery. The review finishes with an analysis of the "most advanced application" of COSS scaffolds as molecular probes. A decent review overall, covering a wide range of uses for a not so monstrous creation.