‘Cyborg ribosome’ reads polystyrene message to create catalyst
A simplified artificial molecular machine with a useful catalyst product hints at the potential of synthetic systems
Chemists in the UK and Belgium have made molecular machines that emulate how cells naturally produce proteins, but read their instructions from threads based on characteristically-unnatural polystyrene. The group led by David Leigh from the University of Manchester use this ‘cyborg ribosome’ to make a simple protein that coils up into an asymmetric catalyst. That catalyst itself then guides an epoxidation reaction to selectively make one of two possible enantiomer products.