No need for metals or recognition sites to build these molecular machines

Nature Reviews Chemistry, Published online: 25 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41570-026-00834-7Electrochemistry is a powerful strategy for precise, tunable and sustainable synthesis that is now broadening the landscape of synthetic peptide chemistry. This Review summarizes electrochemical strategies for peptide synthesis and residue-specific modifications, highlighting opportunities for the efficient preparation of bioactive and structurally diverse peptides.

This study introduces looped diarylethene photoswitches that reversibly alter ring size and thereby modulate molecular strain using light. The strain was monitored via the diagnostic absorption maxima of the photogenerated closed isomers. Incorporation of an allene functionality into the loop region allowed for remote-controlled reactivity tuning in a dipolar cycloaddition with diazoacetate.

Clues to a modern mystery could be lurking in information collected generations ago.

A curved nitrogen-doped nanocarbon synthesized that can flip shape and trap a gold atom at its center

Emissive organic salts have long been integral to the discovery of fluorescence phenomena and functional luminescent dyes. Typically, one component of the salt acts as the photoactive unit (luminopho...

Coupling synthetic negative feedback loops (NFLs) offers a step toward instilling order in solutions and achieving the spatiotemporal control seen in biological systems. This study shows that coupling up to three NFLs with different activation thresholds results in hierarchical behavior. Resource competition over Zn(II) mimics ecological interspecific competition—the stronger loop (i.e., the mandrill in the figure) reduces the fitness of the weaker one (i.e., the gray monkeys that do not eat), unless the latter cooperate to overcome the disadvantage.

A mechanochromic rotaxane capable of releasing azetidine-trityl-maleimide (ATM), a new fluorescent probe displaying excellent optical properties (rigidochromic, large Stokes shift, solvent insensitiv...

Study in mice and human cadavers hints that a brain-protective gene in the chromosome becomes more active with age.

Researchers are exploring how to prolong ovarian life and revisiting hormone replacement therapy — a once routine treatment that has fallen out of favour.

Are you, or do you know, a passionate chemistry or chemical engineering undergraduate in the UK looking for a non-lab-based summer internship (aimed at 3rd…

We're an interdisciplinary research group led by Dr Stephen Fielden within the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham. We research polymers, nanoparticles and supramolecular chemistry.