Wordle Challenge 3: Nobel Edition

Did you have fun playing Wordle Chem Challenge One and Two?

This one kicks up the difficulty another notch. I've searched through the Nobel Prize website, and grabbed the press release / presentation speech (pre-1972) for several laureates. Can you piece together who's who?

(Note: As in past challenges, I've stripped out the names of the winners, as well as certain non-helpful terms - URL, website, etc.)

Entry 1

Entry 2

Entry 3

Entry 4

Entry 5

Entry 6

Entry 7

Entry 8

Entry 9

Think you know 'em? Leave answers in the comments!

Smells Like Satiety

The NYT Well Blog recently covered a fascinating study out of TUM* in Munich, Germany: olive oil may cause you to feel satiated faster and eat less food. Apparently, study volunteers fed yogurt with olive oil mixed in showed a spike in serotonin levels, and ate about 175 calories less each day than experimental groups given different fats (rapeseed, butterfat, or lard).

But was it the fat, or was it the flavor? The researchers isolated aroma compounds from the olive oil, specifically hexanal and 2E-hexenal, and mixed them in with yogurt. Same effects! In the press release, Prof. Peter Schieberle comments "Our findings show that aroma is capable of regulating satiety."

Smells rule neurochemistry. It wasn't that long ago, really, that Axel and Buck won the 
Nobel Prize for their research into olfactory organization. Two years later, another unsolved mystery, that of "blood smell," came to light in ACIEE. Turns out, both blood smell and the new research on olive oil aroma depend partially on medium-chain aldehydes (hexanal-decanal) and unsaturated ketones. You can even smell ketosis, an alternative metabolism found in diabetic crises and Atkins dieters, by the tangy, astringent odor on the breath. 

Amazing how sensitive the human nose is for volatile carbonyls! Perhaps this harks back to a rather strange notion of odotopes, or "weak-shape" theory. This suggests that, rather than the "lock-and-key" model observed for enzymatic binding, smell may result from a collection of weak interactions with multiple receptors, based predominantly on molecular shape. 

*Bonus note: I knew I recognized the TUM group from somewhere! Remember this abstract, from J. Agric. Food Chem. last year? Based on my (single, not to be repeated) experience with durian fruit candy, I do wonder how they convinced this poor scientist to be the GC smell-port 'volunteer.'

You couldn't pay me enough.
Source: Steinhaus, TUM | J. Agric. Food Chem 2012

Academic Geneology: "ChemisTree"

Source: Chemistry Tree

Have I been living under a rock? How has the Chemistry Tree escaped me for so long?

Apparently, there's a crowd-sourced, Creative Commons-enabled effort to catalog everyone's academic* genealogy in one easy location. Looks like it spouted from the (much larger) Neurotree, which started up in 2005 and boasts some 38,000 members!

Now, I've seen departments do this for their own faculty - which always seems to trace everyone back to Liebig - but never to this extent. There's a "Closest Nobel" button, so you can see how far removed you are from the Prize, and you can view the "Academic Canopy," which gives a birds-eye overview of all the fields currently cataloged.

Far as I can tell, there's a lot of the "big wheels" already plugged in, but several young up-and-comers are missing. Can you help fill in the branches?

*Nature abhors a vaccum, and I don't see anyone creating an "Industry Tree" (LinkedIn, perhaps?), though it would be fun to see where all the non-academics end up, and who they mentor.

Slow Down, Bob

An open letter to R.B. Woodward (RIP):
(Playfully adapted from Dr. Freddy's post)

Dear Bob,

Listen, I know you can't hear me right now, but I feel like this post may be overdue. Back in your day, the closest thing to "blogs" were the Editorial pages of the newspaper and (actual, cork) bulletin boards. Thus, I'll ask on behalf of all struggling grads and bench chemists: could you please stop being so darn productive?

Someone recently pointed me in the direction of your dual MIT theses. That doctoral title, what chutzpah!

I know, I know, things were different back then. You didn't have a single NMR in your dissertation; after all, it wasn't invented yet! Ditto mass spec or HPLC traces. You characterize everything by mp, bp, and elemental, and yet I can't believe you finished your Ph.D. in a year. 

Dissertation Stats: 64 (typewritten) pages, 23 (hand-drawn) structures, 27 references

Of course, we all know what happened next. You postdoc'd at Illinois for maybe two weeks, and jumped over to Harvard for a 40-year stint. You (almost) single-handedly applied UV and IR to molecular characterization, you made strychnine, chlorophyll, and B12, and you won a single-scientist Nobel at the ripe old age of 48. Some folks even thought you might have deserved (at least) one more! 

Your personality still towers over us today - legends of blue suits, chain smoking, and three-hour lectures abound in roughly 58.8%* of recent blog posts. Even your fashion sense is back in vogue, (perhaps) influenced** by your invisible hand.

While you were making quinine and cortisone in your 30s, we're now just trying to find good, stable jobs. So Bob, please enjoy your well-earned rest, and stop reminding us of how life could have been a few generations ago. We just can't bear the comparison.

*Studies show that roughly 95% of statistics are made up on the spot

**And Mad Men

Digging Nobel Data

The hot topic in the chemblogosphere this past week? The 2012 Nobel Prizes.

Just after the fervor had died down, Samuel Arbesman over at Wired wrote a piece about data mining the Nobel prize nominees. Well, there goes my weekend!

Sea Creature? Alien ship? Nope, just a light fixture.

See, the Nobel foundation (wisely) restricts release of the nominations until 50 years have passed. Thus, the data are somewhat dated, and they're not available online for all the prizes yet; sadly, Chemistry currently lacks any nomination data. But, ironically, a fully searchable database exists for Physiology and Medicine prize nominations, ca. 1900-1951.

Raw Hits - Playing around, I entered in terms one might choose for interdisciplinary awards: chem (235 hits), drug (only 7 hits!), crystal (54 hits), antibiotics (28 hits), and reaction (84 hits).

Usual Suspects - Future winners no doubt collect their share of early nominations, such as Waksman (streptomycin, 43 nods), Fleming (penicillin, 34 nods), and Ehrlich (chemotherapy / staining, 73 nods).

Superlatives - Obviously, the "career prize" aspect of the Nobel entered into judging quite early. Paul van Grutzen nominated Emil Abderhalden in 1917, saying "With great elegance [he] has solved many problems in chemistry." Two nominators in 1901 and 1905 nominated Albert von Koelliker for "A 60 year career in anatomy." In 1950, 10 nominators chose to "stuff" the ballot box in favor of Edward Kendall "...for his notable contributions to biochemistry."

Special Award Goes to...Prof. Jacques Loeb (UChicago / UC-Berkeley / Rockefeller). Far as I can tell, Dr. Loeb wins for most nominations in this category - 79 times, from 1901-1924 - without winning the Prize. His work involved artificial parthenogenesis, inducing egg cells to begin division without prior fertilization, using chemical signalling molecules and UV light.

Readers: Have fun with the database, and let me know what you find in the comments!

Cutting-Edge, Nobel-Worthy Chemistry

After all the early fuss about the merits of the 2012 Chemistry Nobel Prize, I noticed this challenge, couched in an earlier Chemjobber comment thread:

"The organic chemists seem to get their hides chapped most easily when a Nobel gets awarded to a 'biologist'. It's worth asking 'what are the fundamental unanswered questions in organic chemistry?'" (Emphasis mine)

Here are three areas, broadly defined, that I believe could win the Chemistry prize next year.

Synthetic trachea
University College London, 2011

1. Whither Polymers?  Darlings of early 20th-century industry, yet they've taken a back burner lately, winning their most recent Nobel in 2000. But, what a decade! Self-healing polymers. Fluoroelastomers you can print into any shape. Synthetic organs, even, grown from biodegradable polymer scaffolds. Trouble with this prize? Picking only three winners...

2. Biochemical Assembly Lines. Yes, cue the "it's not chemistry!" complaints, but I really like work which elucidates the cellular mechanisms plants, animals, and microbes use to assemble huge, medicinally-relevant natural products. Researchers can prompt E. coli to make an antifungal compound, for instance, or yeast to make a cancer therapy. Directed evolution of these assembly proteins, or the DNA which encodes them, can lead to products with wild substitutions and unexpected properties.  Bonus: All the 'big wheels' tend to be card-carrying chemists, and work in chemistry departments. The overarching goal tends to be chemical - utilization of Nature's machinery to produce new compounds.

Usual suspects: Christopher Walsh, Chaitan Khosla, David Liu, Ben Shen.

Walsh Group, JACS 2012

3. Fundamental Catalysis. Technically, there have been a few Nobels for this fairly recently (2001, 2005, 2011). But, what a decade! Here's some currently-exploding fields:

Organocatalysis
Chiral Anion Catalysis
Gold Catalysis
New carbene ligands
Frustrated Lewis pairs
Catalytic C-H activation

Any discipline on this short list could take home a Nobel within 10 years. Admittedly, some of these are rather young, but, as Ash has pointed out, the committee has rewarded ever-shorter publication-to-prize gaps, so it's not without precedent.

Usual Suspects: Dean Toste, Melanie Sanford, Anthony Arduengo, Graham Hutchings, Douglas Stephan, David MacMillan, Benjamin List

Readers, who would you award a Chemistry Nobel?

2012 Chemistry Nobel - And the Winner Is...

Source: Forbes.com

Congratulations to Profs. Lefkowitz and Kobilka, winners of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry! (Admittedly, it's a bit tough to wake up for the webcast, but vale la pena.)

This year, the prize reflects both men's work with G-protein coupled receptors; these receptors influence all sorts of processes in the body, from smell and vision to immunity and mood regulation. Incidentally, ChemBark had no listed odds for this win

Congratulations, gentlemen! Back to bed for now...

Update, 10/10/12 - As I noted on Twitter, "Since 2000, 6 out of 13 #Chemistry #Nobel prizes awarded for #Biology: 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2012."

I also asked whether the prize would fit better under "Chemistry" or "Physiology or Medicine." Apparently, I'm not alone here: see essays from Nat. Chem. and SciAm.

"Post-America Depression"

An admittedly belated congratulations to Profs. Gurdon and Yamanaka, winners of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Though multiple media outlets covered the announcement, this time around I was primarily informed by blogs and coverage by the New York Times.

A commenter on Twitter alerted me that the Times, perhaps facing bad press in light of this huge multinational story, had removed certain lines from their article, sans correction. The quote, from Prof. Yamanaka, spoke of his tongue-in-cheek disorder "P.A.D.: Post-America Depression" (Yamanaka had worked at the Gladstone Institute in CA for three years, then returned to Japan). 

While originally cast as a witty aside, a bit of 'Google-fu' indicates he might have actually been feeling physical symptoms of depression upon returning to Japan's research culture in 1996.

Prof. Shinya Yamanaka, 2012 Nobelist
Credits: Chris Goodfellow, Gladstone | nobel.se

iCeMS Crosstalk Transcript - "[Yamanaka] couldn't wake up in the morning, and even thought of quitting research and going back to the clinical practice"

NY Times Bay Area Blog (2009) - "I almost died as a scientist"

NIH Record (2010) - "Non-existent were funds to hire. Yamanaka was virtually alone in the lab, cleaning cages"

Kyoto Prize lecture (2010) - "What was even more trying was that there were few people around me who understood what I was doing. I was working hard on the research of mouse ES cells at a university medical department, when my senior researchers suggested that I should try something different that would be of some value to medical science, even though they too found my research interesting. Then I began to feel down, eventually reaching the point where I began to think that I should give up my career as a researcher and return to a job as a surgeon where, even if I were clumsy, I could still be of some help"

Am I the only one who finds this intriguing, and even instructive for younger scientists? Here's an internationally-recognized researcher, winning a huge scientific prize, and he's baring his soul about nearly giving up his future success due to an unsupportive, intellectually unstimulating environment! 

In the Times' scrubbed quote, I see flashbacks: Einstein, sitting bored in his patent office. Feynman's near burnout at Cornell. Kary Mullis managing a bakery. Nobelists may be recognized for their acumen, but it's the emotional connections we workaday scientists imprint on to "muddle through" tough lab hurdles. By removing Yamanaka's quote, one removes that tiny bit of tarnish on the shiny gold prize medal - the human connection - making him less "real" for researchers everywhere.

Too Good to be True - The "98% Turnover" Dilemma

"If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" - Anonymous Skeptic


On a gorgeous Spring day, I awoke to find birds singing and the sun shining. After rolling up a window shade and brewing a fresh pot of coffee, I was ready to tackle overnight emails and visit the great Twitter machine.


The first thing I saw?

("Your atoms?" Do I own my atoms? Does anyone? And doesn't that figure seem, well, a little high?)


OK, wait, I'm a scientist, so it's just in my nature to be skeptical. But with 50+ re-tweets, and 18 'favorites' already, I felt this 'fact' needed a bit of perspective. Surely a little digging (assisted by @doctorchemed and @Chemjobber, thanks!) will turn up the truth, right? 


First, let's stop at the likely source for the factoid: this segment from a 2007 All Things Considered episode. It mentions the mysterious "98%" figure, and goes on to give a perfectly rational-sounding explanation, backed up by a scientist (Ph.D. = credibility). The reporters' comments tend towards the usual suspects - oxidative stress, dead skin cells, DNA copying errors. It's well known that several body tissues do indeed cycle through, so they leave another breadcrumb trail for us to follow: "...a study published in the Annual Report for Smithsonian Institution (huh?) in 1953..."

"Mr. Isotope" Seal of Approval?
Source: Fourmilab

Well, thanks to archive.org, we can find the "study" fairly quickly. It seems that, in 1953, Paul C. Aebersold (dubbed "Mr. Isotope" by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission), wrote to the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Given the appearance of annual budgets, secretarial minutes, and auction items, this has to be the AEC's equivalent of a progress report. Consider Aebersold's title: Director, Isotopes Division, Atomic Energy Commission (now part of the NRC). While it's tempting to believe this is a "scientific publication," there's little in the way of hard data, and the text reads more like an historical recap, or perhaps a biography, than an experimental procedure. Read the following quotes, from p.239 of the document:

"We need more people trained in the use of isotopes — people who can apply this new tool to tomorrow's problems in medicine, science, and technology - more 'isotopologists'...We have hardly scratched the possibilities of scientific achievement."

Make sense yet? It's a funding appeal! The speech recounts the glory of the atomic age, from the Curies to the end of WWII, and the line about the "approximately 98 percent of the atoms in us..." (p. 232) serves as another brick in the staircase, built towards the temple of program renewal.


Since Aebersold discloses no study or reference data, my skepticism mounts. If we really recycle almost our whole body, how could we detect blood contaminants, such as PFOA or BPA? How could teeth be stained, if you were always churning out new enamel? (you're not) How would "belly-button microflora" from different places still be detectable on you, if you were always throwing them away?

George de Hevesy
Source: Nobel Foundation

Let's go one more notch back in the literature. George de Hevesy, 1943 Nobelist in Chemistry, developed many of the earliest radiotracers, radioactive compounds used to monitor human, plant, and animal metabolism. Read his Nobel lecture; de Hevesy indicates, with hard data, that work on rabbit skeletal exchange (that is, watching radioactive phosphorus diffuse in and out) resulted in 6.7-29.7% change in various bones over 50 days. So, for certain tissues (the higher values), we could say that, over the course of a year, the 98% value sounds correct. But for the 6.7%? Well, a year is not 746 days long, so that can't possibly apply. Further de Hevesy work utilized labeled calcium ions to show that only 1/3 of the mouse skeleton is replaced during its entire life.

Source: Edupics

Well, old data is exactly that...old. So, you have to flash forward in time to verify conclusions. Here's an NC State Extension primer on osteoporosis, which mentions that approximately 1/5 (20%) of the adult human skeleton is renewed each year. 


So, why all this focus on bones, bones, bones? Turns out, the skeleton in an average human being weighs somewhere around 12-18% of total weight. If 20% is renewed, that means 80% is not. Thus, without considering any other vital body system (neurons? scar tissue? cartilage?) the 98% exchange can't be correct - somewhere around 10% of your body's atoms stay unchanged every year!


(Readers, if you see factual or logical errors here, I welcome future impassioned discussions in the comments!) 

Links and Such

A few recent internet chemistry items for your viewing enjoyment:

Paul is already hard at work predicting October's Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Chemjobber waxes on vacation requirements (or not) in academic labs.



Hey look, nitrogen particles!  Wait, no, that's snow...

Over at Forbes, Matt has a profile of Peter Hirth, the man behind Sutent and Zelboraf.


Ivan Amato chats up horseradish and pain receptors in the Washington Post.

NPR's Morning Edition covered a recent Nature article, but what the heck is a "nitrogen particle"?