There is increasing demand for synthetic DNA. However, our ability to make, or write, DNA lags behind our ability to sequence, or read, it. This Review discusses commercialized DNA synthesis technologies in the pursuit of closing the DNA writing gap.

There’s a theory that’s in vogue in astrochemistry called “Assembly Theory.” It posits that highly complex molecules—many acids, for example—could only come from living beings. The molecules are either part of living beings, or they’re things that intelligent living beings manufacture.

If Assembly Theory holds up, we could use it to search for aliens—by scanning distant planets and moons for complex molecules that should be evidence of living beings. That’s the latest idea from Assembly Theory’s originator, University of Glasgow chemist Leroy Cronin. “This is a radical new approach,” Cronin told The Daily Beast.

But not every expert agrees it would work—at least not anytime soon. To take chemical readings of faraway planets, scientists rely on spectroscopy. This is the process of interpreting a planet’s color palette to assess the possible mix of molecules in its atmosphere, land, and oceans.

Saturn ’s giant moon, Titan, is due to launch in 2027. When it arrives in the mid-2030s, it will begin a journey of discovery that could bring about a new understanding of the development of life in the universe. This mission, called Dragonfly, will carry an instrument called the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS), designed to help scientists hone in on the chemistry at work on Titan. It may also shed light on the kinds of chemical steps that occurred on Earth that ultimately led to the formation of life, called prebiotic chemistry.

Titan’s abundant complex carbon-rich chemistry, interior ocean, and past presence of liquid water on the surface make it an ideal destination to study prebiotic chemical processes and the potential habitability of an extraterrestrial environment.

DraMS will allow scientists back on Earth to remotely study the chemical makeup of the Titanian surface. “We want to know if the type of chemistry that could be important for early pre-biochemical systems on Earth is taking place on Titan,” explains Dr. Melissa Trainer of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

Quantum cloud computing makes quantum computing resources available to organizations, academics and other users through cloud technology.

Cloud-based quantum computers function at greater speeds, with higher computing power than conventional computers, because they employ the principles of quantum physics when solving complex computational problems.

Different types of quantum computers exist, such as quantum annealers, analog quantum simulators and universal quantum computers. Quantum annealers are considered the least powerful among quantum computers but work well to solve optimization problems. Analog quantum simulators, on the other hand, are powerful systems that can solve physics and biochemistry problems.

The living mycelium networks are capable of efficient sensorial fusion over very large areas and distributed decision making. The information processing in the mycelium networks is implemented via propagation of electrical and chemical signals en pair with morphological changes in the mycelium structure. These information processing mechanisms are manifested in experimental laboratory findings that show that the mycelium networks exhibit rich dynamics of neuron-like spiking behaviour and a wide range of non-linear electrical properties. On an example of a single real colony of Aspergillus niger, we demonstrate that the non-linear transformation of electrical signals and trains of extracellular voltage spikes can be used to implement logical gates and circuits.

For their new study, the researchers aimed to understand how quantum correlations inside a source material, be it a gas or a mineral, would impact the quantum properties of the light bursts coming out, if at all. “High harmonic generation is a very important area. And still, until recently, it was described by a classical picture of light,” Kaminer says.

In quantum mechanics, figuring out what’s going on with more than a few particles at the same time is notoriously difficult. Kaminer and Alexey Gorlach, a graduate student in his lab, used their COVID-imposed isolation to try to make progress on a fully quantum description of light emitted in high harmonics. “It’s really crazy; Alexey built a super complex mathematical description on a scale that we’ve never had before,” Kaminer says.

Next, to fully incorporate the quantum properties of the material used to generate this light, Kaminer and Gorlach teamed up with Andrea Pizzi, then a graduate student at the University of Cambridge and now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.

Kim et al. used directed evolution methods to identify a high-fidelity SpCas9 variant, Sniper2L, which exhibits high general activity but maintains high specificity at a large number of target sites.

The animal brain consists of tens of billions of neurons or nerve cells that perform complex tasks like processing emotions, learning, and making judgments by communicating with each other via neurotransmitters. These small signaling molecules diffuse—move from high to low concentration regions—between neurons, acting as chemical messengers.

Scientists believe that this diffusive motion might be at the heart of the brain’s superior function. Therefore, they have aimed to understand the role of specific neurotransmitters by detecting their release in the brain using amperometric and microdialysis methods. However, these methods provide insufficient information, necessitating better sensing techniques.

To this end, scientists developed an optical imaging method wherein protein probes change their fluorescence intensity upon detecting a specific neurotransmitter. Recently, a group of researchers from Shibaura Institute of Technology in Japan led by Professor Yasuo Yoshimi has taken this idea forward. They have successfully synthesized fluorescent molecularly imprinted polymeric nanoparticles (fMIP-NPs) that serve as probes to detect specific neurotransmitters–serotonin, dopamine, and acetylcholine.

A team of researchers led by the University of Innsbruck have observed a quantum tunneling effect in experiments that build off 15 years of research into such reactions and marks the slowest charged particle reaction ever observed until now. But while such chemical reactions have only been theoretical up to this point, can it be achieved in real-world experiments?

“It requires an experiment that allows very precise measurements and can still be described quantum-mechanically,” said Dr. Roland Wester, who is a professor of theoretical *physics at the University of Innsbruck, and lead author of the study. “The idea came to me 15 years ago in a conversation with a colleague at a conference in the United States.”

Super-resolution microscopy methods are essential for uncovering the structures of cells and the dynamics of molecules. Since researchers overcame the resolution limit of around 250 nanometers (while winning the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their efforts), which had long been considered absolute, the methods of microscopy have progressed rapidly.

Now a team led by LMU chemist Prof. Philip Tinnefeld has made a further advance through the combination of various methods, achieving the highest resolution in three-dimensional space and paving the way for a fundamentally new approach for faster imaging of dense molecular structures. The new method permits axial resolution of under 0.3 nanometers.

The researchers combined the so-called pMINFLUX method developed by Tinnefeld’s team with an approach that utilizes special properties of graphene as an energy acceptor. pMINFLUX is based on the measurement of the fluorescence intensity of molecules excited by laser pulses. The method makes it possible to distinguish their lateral distances with a resolution of just 1 nanometer.