Green hydrogen, produced when water is split into hydrogen and oxygen using a process called electrolysis, is a promising tool for decarbonizing the planet: Unlike power created by burning fossil fuels, when run on renewable electricity, it has no negative impact on the environment.

Accordingly, as reliable energy sources become increasingly vital for ensuring a consistent and enduring global energy supply, many industries are pivoting to embrace next-generation zero-emission technologies, said Tomaz Neves-Garcia, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University.

“Carbon dioxide is an abundant resource that we need to make an effort to capture and utilize,” he said. “When paired with industrial waste, it can be transformed into valuable products, so we came up with a process where instead of releasing its energy, we actually harvest it from the capturing process to produce green hydrogen and valuable calcite.”

In the first demonstration of their technology, the team successfully captured carbon dioxide (CO₂) using industrial by-products such as steel slag and coal ash. The gas reacted with those materials to permanently form high-purity calcite, a widely used industrial mineral with applications ranging from construction materials to pharmaceuticals and agriculture.

The team’s results showed that the chemical reactions their process created reduced the energy required for water electrolysis and green hydrogen production. This also meant the team was able to produce hydrogen with negative emissions by employing widely available grid electricity, paving the way for hydrogen to be produced in a much more effective and cheaper way than traditional methods of generation, which require significant amounts of electricity.

“Our technology does not treat CO₂ as a burden that must be managed,” said Neves-Garcia. “Instead of wasting energy, we are actually creating value and creating energy. This is what makes the potential of this process really impactful.”

The study was published July 8 in the journal ACS Energy Letters.

While utilizing green hydrogen offers many environmental benefits, researchers have also noted that widespread adoption would greatly benefit the global economy.

For instance, because the team’s new chemical process doesn’t rely on specialized materials to capture carbon dioxide, their findings introduce a sustainable way for steel and coal industries to transform unwanted waste into valuable calcite products, said Robert Baker, senior author of the study and a professor in chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State.

“This technology is exciting because it takes two abundant waste streams and converts them to valuable products, which are in high demand for fuels and manufacturing,” said Baker. “It also has the potential to make a significant economic impact without relying on carbon credits, government subsidies or environmental mandates.”

According to the study, when combined with the value of the calcite co-product, the projected cost of production is less than $1 per kilogram, making their green hydrogen scalable and readily competitive with the cost of producing conventional fossil-fuel-derived hydrogen.

While both methods have limitations and advantages, if this team’s process is widely implemented across interconnected sectors, researchers estimate the study’s technology could prevent about 500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution annually. Beyond helping to protect the environment, their solution to mitigate these greenhouse gases represents an abundant and inexpensive carbon source that could be utilized for sustainable manufacturing of many other much-needed complex materials and chemicals.

As investment in green technologies grows worldwide, researchers say, this work emphasizes the importance of major chemical leaps in expanding energy systems and reducing our carbon footprint.

“Climate solutions do not only not have to be more expensive, they can also be simpler, scalable and economically attractive,” said Neves-Garcia. “We have the ability now to implement them.”

Corrado Masciocchi, an undergraduate research fellow at Ohio State, was also a co-author. This work was supported by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.

Although they are some of the most widespread substances on Earth, not much is known about eumelanin, or natural organic matter (NOM) — a dark-colored substance formed by the decomposition of biological material. In humans, eumelanin is a vital pigment in skin and other tissues that protects cells from damage by ultraviolet radiation. In nature, NOM gives rivers and soils their color and affects light-driven reactions like photosynthesis. 

Although these compounds have been studied individually for decades, researchers in a new study, by scrutinizing them alongside each other, have shown that eumelanin and NOM have common properties beyond their dark colors. 

“Synthesizing the molecular building blocks in eumelanin and NOM is akin to two very different approaches for creating a diverse set of words," said Bern Kohler, one of the senior authors of the study and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University. “Melanin synthesis is like giving someone multiple copies of the alphabet and asking them to make words, while NOM synthesis is like using scissors to cut words out of books from a library.” 

Now, using advanced spectroscopy and imaging to study disassembled eumelanin nanoparticles, Kohler and his colleagues were able to observe few-layered stacks only a few nanometers in size that closely resemble nanostructures seen in NOM samples. These common structures were revealed to be responsible for their similar optical properties. 

Even though the starting materials and chemical pathways that lead to underlying molecules in eumelanin and NOM are remarkably different, these tiny structures show that they can assemble to form common nanostructures. These results reveal how common photoproperties can emerge in both natural and lab-made carbon-based nanomaterials despite notable differences in their chemical structures, said Kohler. 

The study was recently published in ACS Central Science.

What’s more, understanding eumelanin and NOM could help scientists create a swath of sustainable technologies, from more efficient solar power cells to longer-lasting batteries and electronics, said Meera Madhu, co-author of the study and a PhD student in chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State. 

“Eumelanin can absorb the entire solar spectrum, so by finding a way to convert that into energy that can be stored or used in viable ways, it’s going to become one avenue to overcome the energy issues that we have,” she said.

Looking ahead, the study concludes that this research serves as a valuable template for studying and designing other carbon-based nanomaterials, paving the way for new discoveries in fields like light harvesting, energy storage and bioelectronics. 

“This fundamental understanding of how eumelanin and NOM absorb and respond to light could ultimately help guide rational design of carbon-based materials,” said Madhu. “By bringing together two materials that have so far been studied separately, this work gives researchers a framework they can build on to understand related carbon materials.”

Other co-authors include Aleksandra Ilina from Ohio State, as well as Hang Li and Garrett McKay from Texas A&M University. This work was supported by the Ohio Eminent Scholars program, the National Science Foundation and the Army Research Office.

Anant Agarwal, a professor in electrical and computer engineering, Alan Luo, a professor in materials science and engineering and integrated systems engineering, and Dehua Pei, a professor in chemistry and biochemistry, are among the 169 fellows named this year. Their addition brings the number of Ohio State Fellows in the academy to 24.

Being elected to the NAI Fellowship is the highest professional distinction awarded solely to inventors. The 2025 class of fellows represents 127 universities, government agencies and research institutions across 40 U.S. states.

“The research done by Ohio State’s newest National Academy of Inventors fellows underscores our researchers’ role as a beacon of collaboration and progress, while also driving discoveries that directly impact people’s lives,” said John M. Horack, vice president for research. “Their recognition highlights the tangible impact of their innovations, from life-saving medical advances to transformative solutions that shape our future, and we are proud to support their groundbreaking work.”

Anant Agarwal 

Agarwal joined Ohio State in 2017. Previously, he served as the technical adviser for the Wide Bandgap Initiative in the U.S. Department of Energy. Agarwal’s research focuses on developing semiconductor technologies to create more efficient power electronics.

Today, wide band-gap semiconductors have the potential to improve efficiency and reduce energy losses consumption in high-power systems, but Agarwal’s lifelong goal has been to commercialize these technologies to resurrect the domestic power electronics industry.

“This technology is very important for high-power applications, like electric vehicles, power supplies, windmills and grid-level connectivity,” said Agarwal. “I’m excited and passionate about this technology because it will make a difference in people’s lives.”

One of Agarwal’s key inventions is the development of SiC-based MOSFET power devices, a type of transistor that is widely used in power electronic circuits. These devices help steer energy in power converters in systems such as in an electric vehicle.

Although Agarwal has worked to advance semiconductor research since the late ’80s, he said that the U.S. is only beginning to catch up to world leaders in the growing sector. Ohio State is currently one of three universities in the country actively teaching and conducting research in this area, he said.

“This technology will allow a lot of renewable sources of energy, such as solar and wind, to transmit energy and electricity over long distances,” said Agarwal. “It’s the perfect technology to change the world.”

Agarwal jointly holds more than 90 patents and has co-authored more than 400 research papers. In 2012, he was elected an IEEE Fellow for his lifetime contributions to Wide Band Gap technologies.

Alan Luo 

Luo joined Ohio State in 2013 after working for 15 years with General Motors Global Research and Development Center. He now leads the Lightweight Materials and Manufacturing Research Laboratory and is Director of the Advanced Casting Research Center at Ohio State.

His research involves developing alternatives to steel by designing lightweight materials, like aluminum, magnesium and titanium alloys for the automotive industry. The core of his work stems from a desire to use science to make real-world impacts, as better transportation benefits all of society. 

“By changing a light metal’s microstructure through adding alloying elements to make it as strong as steel, you can reduce the weight of a transportation product,” he said. “Significantly lighter cars consume less energy, making them more efficient and easier to build.” This applies to both gas and electric cars, as more energy-efficient vehicles mean they could last longer without refueling, and reduced emissions could help lessen the burden on the environment. 

Luo also contributed several new manufacturing processes and developed tools used in  integrated computational materials engineering for vehicle development. He hopes his membership to the NAI inspires the next generation of scientists to continue pushing the envelope in the field. 

Additional recognitions include an R&D 100 Award for his role in developing a lightweight truck engine with General Motors, receiving the USCAR (United States Council for Automotive Research) Special Recognition Award and being an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). To date, Luo has 28 patents and more than 400 technical publications in advanced materials, manufacturing and applications. 

Dehua Pei

Pei joined Ohio State in 1995.  His scientific contributions are centered around combating human diseases with novel therapeutic agents. His research aims to understand the mechanisms behind natural biological processes and then use those discoveries to develop new therapeutic strategies. 

“People have been studying viruses and bacteria for quite some time, but there is still much to learn about how they enter the human cell and cause diseases,” said Pei. Now, Pei’s team has discovered a previously unrecognized and potentially universal cell entry mechanism, a fundamental discovery that has enabled the design of artificial systems that could help with previously untreatable diseases and conditions.  

“Our work is extremely important in terms of practical applications, because if we know how large biomolecules get into the cell, we might be able to take advantage of that mechanism and design cell-permeable biomolecules that could be useful as human therapeutics,” said Pei. “That’s something that the pharmaceutical industry has only dreamed about in the past.” 

Pei’s lab is currently investigating how widely applicable the newfound cell entry mechanism is, and leveraging the mechanism to develop a brand new class of drugs.

“It takes many, many years to make a very important discovery,” said Pei. “One needs to have patience, be ready to work hard and endure the frustrations that come along with it, and if you keep working on it, you can make a difference.” 

His notable recognitions include receiving the Ohio State Innovator of the Year award in 2017, the American Chemical Society Columbus Section Award in 2018, and the Ohio State Distinguished Scholar Award in 2025. He founded or co-founded several biotech companies including Entrada Therapeutics in 2016, where Pei served as its chief scientific advisor between 2016 and 2021. Pei holds 33 U.S. patents.  

The NAI Fellows Program was established to highlight academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society. This class of Fellows will be honored at the NAI 15th Annual Conference on June 4, 2026, in Los Angeles.

This stickiness, known as carbon monoxide (CO) adsorption energy, is a property that can often decide the final product of a chemical reaction. Using a widely accessible advanced electroanalytical technique, researchers found that the strength of this energy actually relies on a mix of reaction factors, including the type of catalyst material, applied voltage, and the surface’s structure.

This is a major step for the field, as gaining a better understanding of how CO adsorption works in real-time can help scientists search for innovative ways to recycle its counterpart, carbon dioxide, into useful fuel products, like methanol and ethanol. By designing better catalysts, these new insights could be used to accelerate the development of cleaner technologies that support a more sustainable future, said Zhihao Cui, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral student in chemistry at The Ohio State University.

“Our approach provides a vital bridge between theory and experiment by helping guide the design of catalysts that can convert CO₂ into useful liquid fuels more efficiently,” said Cui. 

The study was recently published in Nature Catalysis.

Until now, researchers lacked an experimental method to measure carbon monoxide’s binding strength under real reaction conditions, meaning scientists’ theoretical predictions about reaction results were limited in their ability to capture the complexities of electrocatalytic environments. Yet with this study’s method, the team was able to validate their theories by viewing how carbon monoxide interacts with materials like gold and copper, insights that could guide the design of more efficient catalysts for carbon conversion. 

Researchers found that while carbon monoxide can bond with gold and copper with similar strengths, only copper is capable of generating multi-carbon products from CO₂. These relatively surprising results reveal that the CO adsorption process is actually more complex than researchers previously thought, said Anne Co, co-author of the study and a professor in chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State. 

“Carbon dioxide is such a stable molecule, so it's hard to break down,” said Co. “Whether it takes two or twelve steps to complete a reaction, it usually requires a lot of energy.”  

While chemists typically use electrochemistry to generate and store the energy needed, streamlining the process using this team’s new framework could make it easier to realize the energy needs of a potential chemical reaction. Importantly, it’s a significant step in designing better, more sustainable fuels, said Cui, especially since the method is simple enough not to require expensive equipment and can be easily adapted for other types of catalysts. 

“Our framework enables other researchers to extend the same experiment to a wide range of catalysts,” said Cui. 

Researchers noted that while their method does have some limitations, next steps include plans to further refine their model and methods in order to yield more nuanced insights into the chemical world. 

“Even a very simple technique such as the one we used in this study can make a really huge difference in this field,” said Cui. “So as long as your idea is new, you may be able to measure something that was previously considered impossible to measure.”

Other Ohio State co-authors include Kassidy Aztergo and Jiseon Hwang. The study was supported by the National Science Foundation. 

Typically used in chemical reactions essential for drug synthesis and materials development, carbenes are short-lived, highly reactive carbon atoms. In the lab, this can make carbenes especially tricky to create, as methods to form them are limited and often hazardous. 

Now, for the first time, an approach discovered by researchers at The Ohio State University has made producing these metal carbenes much easier, said David Nagib, co-author of the study, a distinguished professor in arts and sciences and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University,

“Our goal all along was to determine if we could come up with new methods of accessing carbenes that others hadn’t found before,” he said. “Because if you could harness them in a milder catalytic way, you could reach new reactivity, which is essentially what we did.”

Researchers came upon this carbene-crafting method by using iron as a metal catalyst and then combining it with chlorine-based molecules that easily generate free radicals. Together, these ingredients worked to form the carbene of their choice, including many that had never been made before. Then, to create a chemical reaction, these carbenes quickly attach to another molecule in a strained bond to form a cyclopropane, which is shaped like a triangle.  

These three-sided molecular fragments are vital to the synthesis of medicines and agrichemicals, in part due to their small size and unusual energy. But while there are many ways to synthesize this shape, which is one of the most common found in medicines, this team’s work was inspired by looking for the best ways to create them.  

“Our lab is obsessed with trying to get the best methods for making cyclopropanes out there as soon as possible,” said Nagib. “We have the eye on the prize of inventing better tools to make better medicines, and along the way, we’ve solved a huge problem in the carbene world.”

The study was recently published in Science.

In decoding one of chemistry’s greatest challenges, the team also found that their method works well in water, suggesting that metal carbenes might one day even be reliably created inside a living cell to discover new drug targets. According to Nagib, this new approach is about 100 times better than previous chemical tools that his lab has produced over the last decade. 

“Our lab is very much a tool development lab,” he said. “And to me, the way you gauge if it’s valuable or interesting is if others use your tool.”

The team expects their discovery to become extremely impactful because for scientists, accessing a new way of creating and classifying carbenes means that the current wasteful, multistep process of producing them can be made both simpler and safer. For consumers, this method suggests that future drugs developed by this technology may be cheaper, more potent, faster-acting, and longer-lasting. 

The work could prevent shortages of important medicines like antibiotics and antidepressants, as well as drugs that treat heart disease, COVID and HIV infections, Nagib said. 

Additionally, because this team’s work is so groundbreaking, they’d like to ensure this transformational organic chemistry tool is accessible to both big and small research labs and drug manufacturers around the world. One of the most effective ways to guarantee this and establish the future of their strategy is to keep improving the current technique, said Nagib. 

“Our team at Ohio State came together in the coolest, most collaborative way to develop this tool,” he said. “So we’re going to continue racing to show how many different types of catalysts it could work on and make all kinds of challenging and valuable molecules.”

Other Ohio State co-authors include Khue Nguyen, Xueling Mo, Bethany DeMuynck, Mohamed Elsayed, Jacob Garwood, Duong Ngo and Ilias Khan Rana. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Brown Institute for Basic Science.

In a new paper, Xia Ning, lead author of the study and a professor of biomedical informatics and computer science and engineering at The Ohio State University, introduces DiffSMol, a generative AI model capable of generating realistic 3D structures of small molecules that can serve as promising drug candidates.

DiffSMol works by analyzing the shapes of known ligands – molecules that bind to protein targets – and using these shapes as conditions to generate novel 3D molecules that better bind to the protein targets. Study results showed that when used to create molecules with the potential to quicken the drug-making process, DiffSmol has a 61.4% success rate, outperforming prior research attempts that achieved success about 12% of the time. 

“By using well-known shapes as a condition, we can train our model to generate novel molecules with similar shapes that don’t exist in previous chemical databases,” said Ning. 

Once DiffSMol learns the shapes of these ligands, the team’s model can also tailor those new molecules to encourage certain binding characteristics. According to the paper, this suggests the model could modify them to have more favorable drug-like properties, altering aspects like their synthesizability or toxicity. 

The study was published in Nature Machine Intelligence.

It takes about a decade for a drug to be developed and brought to market, but shortening that time could open up new paths to develop novel pharmaceuticals and agrochemical agents for use in many different industries. Chiefly, compared to existing computational methods used to design drugs, DiffSMol takes only 1 second to generate a single molecule, said Ziqi Chen, co-author of the study and a former doctoral student in computer science and engineering at Ohio State.  

“Generative AI models have the potential to substantially expedite this process and improve cost efficiency,” said Chen.

To demonstrate DiffSMol’s abilities, researchers conducted case studies on molecules used in two crucial drug targets, one called cyclin-dependent kinase 6 (CDK6), which can regulate cell cycles and disrupt cancer growth, and neprilysin (NEP), which is used in therapies aimed at slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s. Their results revealed that the molecules DiffSMol created would likely be very effective, said Ning. 

“It’s very encouraging for us to find molecules with even better properties than known ligands,” she said. “It indicates that our developed models have great potential in identifying good drug candidates.” 

The researchers also made DiffSMol’s code available for other scientists to use.

At the moment, DiffSMol is still only able to generate new molecules based on shapes of previously known ligands, which is a limitation the team hopes to overcome in future work.  

Further research will also be aimed at improving the model’s ability to learn from complex molecule data and generate molecules that exhibit a wider range of potential interactions.  

Despite the need for more testing, the team anticipates that continued leaps in AI will one day allow their work to reach new heights, partly due to AI’s global rise in popularity.  

“Nowadays, people are applying these advanced models to molecule generation, to chemistry, to nearly all science areas,” said Ning. “This area grows really fast and I don’t see it slowing down anytime soon.” 

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Library of Medicine and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Other co-authors were Bo Peng and Daniel Adu-Ampratwum from Ohio State and Tianhua Zhai from the University of Pennsylvania.  

In the lab, synthesizing methanol can be extremely difficult, due to the extremely complex reaction pathway needed to select for it. Previous attempts by the same team to manufacture this valuable liquid fuel from carbon dioxide have used a combination of cobalt phthalocyanine (CoPc) molecules and electricity, but this method is inefficient as only about 30% of the carbon dioxide is converted to methanol. 

To better scale up methanol production, the team in this study added a second material, nickel tetramethoxyphthalocyanine (NiPc-OCH3), to the nanotube catalyst where the reaction takes place. They discovered that adding this second molecule can catapult methanol production efficiency up to 50%, about 66% better than any other known process. 

“This catalyst system is one of the very few that can produce methanol at such high selectivity,” said Robert Baker, co-author of the study and a professor in chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University.

Enhancing methanol production would not only allow scientists to make the liquid faster and more cheaply but also help them limit the amount of unwanted waste products. More importantly, having steady access to such a flexible renewable resource could transform many aspects of daily life, including the transportation sector, said Baker. 

“Methanol is a really desirable product for CO2 reduction because it has such a high energy density,” he said. “It’s a great molecule – of all the possible products of CO2 reduction, methanol is an excellent candidate for use as an alternative fuel.” 

The study was recently published in Nature Nanotechnology.

To confirm their findings, scientists used a technique called sum-frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy to analyze where carbon dioxide molecules were binding and how they were moving during their reaction. 

When carbon dioxide is introduced to NiPc-OCH3, researchers can see that it becomes carbon monoxide before the catalytic reaction turns it into methanol.  

In this case, the team saw that the carbon nanotubes, which held the two catalysts in place and helped electricity flow more smoothly through the reaction, influenced the carbon dioxide molecules’ movements. These tubes essentially act as a highway that ferries the reaction intermediates from one catalyst site to the next during this process.

“The dual nature of the nanotube catalysts causes the process to work extremely efficiently,” said Baker. 

Since this new process of methanol generation does require a large quantity of carbon dioxide, efforts to scale it up for commercial use would likely have to be used in tandem with carbon capture technologies that can remove harmful greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and sequester them elsewhere. “Capturing and converting carbon directly to a fuel would be one of humanity’s best possible options,” said Baker. 

What’s more, the understanding gained in this study about how creating dual catalysts from nanoscale building blocks can likely pave the way for other types of sustainable technologies, including opportunities for researchers to engineer brand new types of catalysts and chemical processes, said Baker. 

“Now we have the tools to understand how when you put different nanoscale components together in the right architectures, you can create new, more efficient systems,” he said. “It’s a really exciting time for this kind of research.”

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture. Co-authors include Quansong Zhu from Ohio State; Alvin Chang and Zhenxing Feng from Oregon State University; Huan Li, Zhan Jiang and Yongye Liang from the Southern University of Science and Technology; and Jing Li, Seonjeong Cheon, Yuanzuo Gao, Bo Shang, Conor L. Rooney, Longtao Ren, Shize Yang and Hailiang Wang, all from Yale University. 

Created through a combination of soft chemistry gels and electrospinning — a technique where electrical force is applied to liquid to craft small fibers — the team constructed thin fiber-like strips of titanium dioxide (TiO₂), a compound often utilized in solar cells, gas sensors and various self-cleaning technologies. 

Despite being a great alternative energy source, solar fuel systems that utilize TiO₂ nanoparticles are often power-limited because they can only undergo photocatalysis, or create chemical reactions, by absorbing non-visible UV light. This can cause significant challenges to implementation, including low efficiency and the need for complex filtration systems. 

Yet when researchers added copper to the material to improve this process, their new structures, called nanomats, were able to absorb enough light energy to break down harmful pollutants in air and water, said Pelagia-Iren Gouma, lead author of the study and a professor of materials science and engineering at The Ohio State University.

“There hasn’t been an easy way to create something like a blanket that you can lay on water and start creating energy,” she said. “But we are the only ones who have made these structures and the only ones to demonstrate that they actually work.”

The study was recently published in the journal Advanced Science.

When titanium dioxide absorbs light, electrons are formed that oxidize water and attack pollutants, slowly destroying them until they become benign. When copper is added, that process is supercharged, making it even more effective. 

To determine this, researchers worked to characterize the nanomat’s updated properties to understand how it behaved and what made it different from other self-cleaning nanoparticles, said Gouma. Surprisingly, researchers found that compared to traditional solar cells, these nanomats can be more successful at power generation when placed under natural sunlight, she said.

“These nanomats can be used as a power generator, or as water remediation tools,” she said. “In both ways, you have a catalyst with the highest efficiency reported to date.”

These lightweight, easy-to-remove fiber mats can float and operate atop any body of water and are even reusable through multiple cleaning cycles. Because nanomats are so effective, researchers envision that they could be used to rid water of industrial pollutants in developing countries, turning otherwise contaminated rivers and lakes into sources of clean drinking water. 

Additionally, because this technology doesn’t generate any toxic byproducts like some solar cell systems, nanomats are extremely environmentally friendly. “It’s a safe material, it won’t hurt anything, and it’s as clean as it can be,” said Gouma. 

Still, although this team’s technology is incredibly efficient, how long it will take to scale up commercially depends on how quickly industries take notice of the product. “We have the tools to make them in large quantities and translate them to various industries,” said Gouma. “The only limitation is that it needs someone to take advantage of these abundant resources.”

Overall, the study’s findings suggest that nanomats could be a promising tool in many future photocatalytic applications, including long-term sustainability efforts like environmental remediation as well as solar-driven hydrogen production. 

In the meantime, the team plans to examine ways to optimize the material further. 

“This material is completely novel in terms of a new form of nanotechnology,” said Gouma. “It’s really impressive and something that we are very excited about.”

Other Ohio State co-authors include Fateh Mikaeilia and Mohammad Mahafuzur Rahaman. This study was supported by the National Science Foundation. 

In a significant breakthrough, researchers from The Ohio State University have developed a technology to transform materials like plastics and agricultural waste into syngas, a substance most often used to create chemicals and fuels like formaldehyde and methanol. 

Using simulations to test how well the system could break down waste, scientists found that their approach, called chemical looping, could produce high-quality syngas in a more efficient manner than other similar chemical techniques. Altogether, this refined process saves energy and is safer for the environment, said Ishani Karki Kudva, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State. 

“We use syngas for important chemicals that are required in our day-to-day life,” said Kudva. “So improving its purity means that we can utilize it in a variety of new ways.”

Today, most commercial processes create syngas that is about 80 to 85% pure, but Kudva’s team achieved a purity of around 90% in a process that takes only a few minutes.

This study builds on decades of previous research at Ohio State, led by Liang-Shih Fan, a distinguished university professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering who advised the study. This previous research used chemical looping technology to turn fossil fuels, sewer gas and coal into hydrogen, syngas and other useful products.

In the new study, the system consists of two reactors: a moving bed reducer where waste is broken down using oxygen provided by metal oxide material, and a fluidized bed combustor that replenishes the lost oxygen so that the material can be regenerated. The study showed that with this waste-to-fuel system, the reactors could run up to 45% more efficiently and still produce about 10% cleaner syngas than other methods. 

The study was recently published in the journal Energy and Fuels.

According to a report by the Environmental Protection Agency, 35.7 million tons of plastics were generated in the U.S. in 2018, of which about 12.2% is municipal solid waste, such as plastic containers, bags, appliances, furniture, agricultural residue, paper and food.

Unfortunately, since plastics are resistant to decomposition, they can persist in nature for long periods and can be difficult to completely break down and recycle. Conventional waste management, such as landfilling and incineration, also poses risks to the environment.  

Now, the researchers are presenting an alternative solution to help curb pollution. For example, by measuring how much carbon dioxide their system would pump out compared to conventional processes, findings revealed it could reduce carbon emissions by up to 45%. 

Their project’s design is just one of many in the chemical sector being driven by the urgent need for more sustainable technologies, said Shekhar Shinde, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State.

In this study’s case, their work could help drastically reduce society’s dependence on fossil fuels. 

“There has been a drastic shift in terms of what was done before and what people are trying to do now in terms of decarbonizing research,” he said. 

While earlier technologies could only filter biomass waste and plastics separately, this team’s technology also has the potential to handle multiple types of materials at once by continuously blending the conditions needed to convert them, noted the study. 

Once the team’s simulations yield more data, they eventually hope to test the system’s market capabilities by conducting experiments over a longer time frame with other unique components. 

“Expanding the process to include the municipal solid waste that we get from recycling centers is our next priority,” Kudva said. “The work in the lab is still going on with respect to commercializing this technology and decarbonizing the industry.”

Other Ohio State co-authors include Rushikesh K. Joshi, Tanay A. Jawdekar, Sudeshna Gun, Sonu Kumar, Ashin A Sunny, Darien Kulchytsky and Zhuo Cheng. The study was supported by Buckeye Precious Plastic.

Made using a material called a liquid crystalline elastomer (LCE), a soft rubber-like material that can be stimulated by external forces like light or heat, the polymer is so versatile that it can move in several directions. 

Its behavior, which resembles the movements of animals in nature, includes being able to twist, tilt left and right, shrink and expand, said Xiaoguang Wang, co-author of the study and an assistant professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering at The Ohio State University.

“Liquid crystals are materials that have very unique characteristics and properties that other materials cannot normally achieve,” said Wang. “They’re fascinating to work with.”

This new polymer’s ability to change shapes could make it useful for creating soft robots or artificial muscles, among other high-tech devices in medicine and other fields.

Today, liquid crystals are most often used in TVs and cell phone displays, but these materials often degrade over time. But with the expansion of LEDs, many researchers are focused on developing new applications for liquid crystals.

Unlike conventional materials that can only bend in one direction or require multiple components to create intricate shapes, this team’s polymer is a single component that can twist in two directions. This property is tied to how the material is exposed to temperature changes to control the molecular phases of the polymer, said Wang.  

“Liquid crystals have orientational order, meaning they can self-align,” he said. “When we heat the LCE, they transition into different phases causing a shift in their structure and properties.”   

This means that molecules, tiny building blocks of matter, that were once fixed in place can be directed to rearrange in ways that allow for greater flexibility. This aspect may also make the material easier to manufacture, said Wang. 

The study was recently published in the journal Science.

If scaled up, the polymer in this study could potentially advance several scientific fields and technologies, including controlled drug delivery systems, biosensor devices and as an aid in complex locomotion maneuvers for next-generation soft robots.  

One of the study’s most important findings reveals the three phases that the material goes through as its temperature changes, said Alan Weible, co-author of the study and a graduate fellow in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State. Throughout these phases, molecules shift and self-assemble into different configurations.   

“These phases are one of the key factors we optimized to allow the material ambidirectional shape deformability,” he said. In terms of size, the study further suggests that the material can be scaled up or down to adapt to nearly any need.

“Our paper opens a new direction for people to start synthesizing other multiphase materials,” said Wang. 

Researchers note that with future computational advances, their polymer could eventually be a useful tool for dealing with delicate situations, like those that require the precise design of artificial muscles and joints or upgrading soft nanorobots needed for complex surgeries. 

“In the next few years, we plan to develop new applications and hopefully break into the biomedical field,” said Weible. “There’s a lot more we can explore based on these results.”

This work was supported by the Department of Energy and the Harvard University Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. 

Other co-authors include Yuxing Yao, Shucong Li, Atalaya Milan Wilborn, Friedrich Stricker, Joanna Aizenberg, Baptiste Lemaire, Robert K. A. Bennett, Tung Chun Cheung and Alison Grinthal from Harvard University; Foteini Trigka and Michael M. Lerch from the University of Groningen; Guillaume Freychet, Mikhail Zhernenkov and Patryk Wasik from Brookhaven National Laboratory; and Boris Kozinsky from Bosch Research. 

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is a greenhouse gas that accounts for a large part of Earth’s warming climate, and is produced by power plants, factories and various forms of transportation. Typical carbon capture systems aimed at reducing its presence in the atmosphere work to lower carbon dioxide emissions by isolating CO₂ from other gases and converting it to useful products. However, this process is difficult to implement on an industrial scale due to the massive amount of energy required for these systems to operate. 

Now, using a special nickel-based catalyst, researchers have figured out a way to save much of this precious energy by turning captured carbon dioxide directly into methane, said Tomaz Neves-Garcia, lead author of the study and a current postdoctoral researcher in chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University.

By employing nickel atoms laid out on an electrified surface, the team was able to directly convert carbamate, the captured form of carbon dioxide, to methane. They found that nickel atoms, a cheap and widely available catalyst, were extremely good at making this conversion.

“We are going from a molecule that has low energy and producing from it a fuel that has high energy,” said Neves-Garcia. “What makes this so interesting is that others capture, recover and then convert carbon dioxide in steps, while we save energy by doing these steps simultaneously.” 

Most importantly, streamlining the carbon capture process helps reframe what scientists know about the carbon cycle, and is a vital step to setting up more complex strategies for faster and more efficient climate mitigation technologies. 

“We need to focus on spending the lowest energy possible for carbon capture and conversion,” said Neves-Garcia. “So instead of performing all the capture and conversion steps independently, we can combine it in a single step, bypassing wasteful energy processes.”   

The paper was recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. 

Although many carbon capture methods are still in their early stages, with researchers from an array of fields working to improve them, the field is a promising one, said Neves-Garcia. 

Converting CO₂ into a fuel using renewable electricity has the potential to close the carbon cycle. For example, when methane is burned to generate energy, it emits carbon dioxide, which, if captured and converted back to methane, could lead to a continuous cycle of energy production without adding to Earth’s global warming burden.  

The study also represents the first time that researchers discovered they could use electrochemistry to achieve carbamate conversion to methane. Although many attempts have been made to convert captured CO₂ into useful products, until now most researchers have only shown the ability to produce carbon monoxide.  

“Methane can be a really interesting product, but the most important thing is that this opens a path to develop more processes to convert captured CO₂  into other products,” he said. 

Moving forward, the team expects to keep exploring other chemical clean energy alternatives to help inspire the creation of a variety of sustainable carbon capture routes. 

“Everything always goes back to energy, and there’s a lot of excitement and effort invested in the future of this field to save more of it,” said Neves-Garcia. 

Other co-authors include Quansong Zhu and L. Robert Baker from Ohio State, Liane M. Rossi from the University of Sao Paulo, Mahmudul Hasan and Robert E. Warburton from Case Western Reserve University, Jing Li and Hailiang Wang from Yale University, as well as Zhan Jiang and Yongye Liang from the Southern University of Science and Technology.

The study identified a secure way to attach chemical additives to polyvinyl chloride (PVC). 

Found in everything from toys, construction supplies and medical packaging, PVC plastics currently rank third among the most used plastics worldwide. Despite its widespread use, pure PVC is brittle and sensitive to heat, and manufacturers can only utilize it after stabilizing its properties with other chemicals. 

However, these additives, or plasticizers, are only a short-term fix for stabilizing PVC. Over time, plasticizers leach from the plastics, which allows the material to deteriorate into potentially hazardous organics and microplastics. Now, a team led by Christo Sevov, the principal investigator of the study and an associate professor in chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University, found that using electricity to permanently affix those chemical additives can prevent such unwanted reactions.

“Instead of mixing in those chemicals, our method involves chemically bonding the plasticizer compound directly to PVC by grafting them onto the backbone of the polymer,” said Sevov.

Altering PVC molecules in this way allows for them to become more durable and resistant to chemical changes, eventually leading to materials with more robust properties. 

“This is really one of the few examples that we have where there’s this much control over changing the properties of PVC,” said Sevov. “So this is the first step in controllably modifying PVC to give it properties you’re interested in, whether it’s hard, stretchy or soft.”

The team did run into some challenges; synthetic polymer modifications often fail because the reactions were originally developed for small-molecule analogs, not big-molecule analogs such as pure PVC. To solve this, researchers optimized the catalyst they used in their process, and through trial and error, were able to overcome the issues that arise when editing big molecules. 

The study was recently published in the journal Chem. 

Outside of making leaps in organic chemistry, the team’s work also has implications for the environment, as putting a cap on how quickly plastics degrade can do much to curb the release of microplastics — tiny pieces of plastic debris — into our surroundings. 

Today, scientists know that these particles, which have been found to pollute the air, water and our food supply, are harmful both to humans and wildlife. The average person likely ingests between 78,000 and 211,000 of these particles every year. 

But as experts are beginning to understand the long-term impact microplastics have on Earth, organic chemists are racing to find ways to phase them out of everyday life, said Sevov. 

“Many chemists are shifting their efforts to studying big molecules and developing new chemistries for upcycling, recycling and modifying well-known polymers,” he said. For example, trying to recycle PVC products can cause further degradation to the material due to the high temperatures it takes to convert plastic into something else, so the process isn’t very efficient. 

But using Sevov’s method, “You can potentially reuse the material many, many more times before it really begins to fall apart, improving its lifetime and reusability,” he said. 

In the future, more control over which materials will be safe for consumers will come once efforts to fix PVC leakage can be reliably scaled up, something that the study emphasizes that, at the moment, is possible with their method alone. 

“There’s no better way to do this on the scale you would need for commercial PVC modification because it is an immense process,” said Sevov. “There’s still a lot to play around with before we solve the microplastic situation, though now we’ve laid the groundwork for how to do it.”

Other Ohio State co-authors include Jordan L.S. Zackasee, Valmuri Srivardhan, Blaise L. Truesdell and Elizabeth J. Vrana. This work was supported by the Department of Energy’s Early Career Research Program.

The award celebrates exceptional early career scientists under 42 years of age who have sought to innovate their field by pursuing high-risk, high-reward research. On Oct. 1, Nagib was honored in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History during the 2024 Blavatnik Awards Gala ceremony. 

Established by the Blavatnik Family Foundation in 2007 and independently administered by The New York Academy, the prize aims to support promising scientists at a time when they most need funding and recognition to continue answering society’s most complex scientific questions. 

Independent juries chose the winners and finalists in three categories: life sciences, chemical sciences, and physical sciences and engineering. The 15 finalists in this year’s cohort will receive a $15,000 cash prize.

Nominated by colleagues for the award, Nagib was named a finalist in the chemical science category for his work discovering more effective and previously unknown mechanisms for synthesizing pharmaceuticals. His acknowledgment marks the first time that a faculty member from Ohio State has been honored with the award. 

“What we do at Ohio State is develop new ways to put molecules together so we can make medicines better, faster and more potent,” he said. “So this is a decade’s worth of my students' creative efforts being recognized by this award, too.”

The chemical tools Nagib’s lab creates provide better access to crucial molecules pharmaceutical and biotech companies use to create life-saving drugs, like those that treat infectious diseases, cancer or obesity. 

Currently, their work revolves around developing a new class of chemical catalysts to harness even more reactive chemistry to make novel drug molecules.

“Some chemical reagents are unstable or too unsafe to use in drug development, so we're very passionate and excited about trying to address that right now,” Nagib said. 

To that end, Nagib noted that the award’s unexpected gift will likely be used to bolster lab activities, acquire new high-tech equipment and pursue more ambitious experiments. “It’s icing on the cake that’s going to allow us to test some pie-in-the-sky ideas,” he said.

By the end of 2024, the Blavatnik Awards will have awarded prizes totaling $17.4 million and, to date, honored over 470 scientists.

“We couldn’t have done any of this without Ohio State’s support,” Nagib said. “I love opportunities that push us to keep innovating, and here we have the resources and people to help do that.”

Traditionally, most drugs are assembled using molecular fragments called alkyl building blocks, organic compounds that have a wide variety of applications. However, because of how difficult it can be to combine different types of these compounds into something new, this method of creation is limited, especially for complex medicines.  

To help solve this issue, a team of chemists report the discovery of a particular type of stable nickel complex, a chemical compound that contains a nickel atom.

Since this compound can be made directly from classic chemical building blocks and is easily isolated, scientists can blend them with other building blocks in a manner that promises access to a new chemical space, said Christo Sevov, the principal investigator of the study and an associate professor in chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University.

“There are really no reactions that can very reliably and selectively construct the bonds that we are now constructing with these alkyl fragments,” Sevov said. “By attaching the nickel complexes to them as temporary caps, we found that we can then stitch on all sorts of other alkyl fragments to now make new alkyl-alkyl bonds.”

The study was published in Nature.

On average, it can take a decade of research and development before a drug can successfully be brought to market. During this time, scientists also create thousands of failed drug candidates, further complicating an already extremely expensive and time-intensive process. 

Despite how elusive nickel alkyl complexes have been for chemists, by relying on a unique merger of organic synthesis, inorganic chemistry and battery science, Sevov’s team found a way to unlock their astonishing capabilities. “Using our tool, you can get much more selective molecules for targets that might have fewer side effects for the end user,” said Sevov. 

According to the study, while typical methods to construct a new molecule from a single chemical reaction can take much time and effort, their tool could easily allow researchers to make upwards of 96 new drug derivatives in the time it would normally take to make just one. 

Essentially, this ability will reduce the time to market for life-saving medicines, increase drug efficacy while lowering the risk of side effects, and reduce research costs so chemists can work to target severe diseases that impact smaller groups, the researchers say. Such advances also pave the way for scientists to study the bonds that make up the fundamentals of basic chemistry and discover more about why these challenging bonds work, said Sevov. 

The team is also already collaborating with scientists at numerous pharmaceutical companies who hope to use their tool to see how it impacts their workflow. “They’re interested in making thousands of derivatives to fine-tune a molecule’s structure and performance, so we teamed up with the pharmaceutical companies to really explore the power of it,” Sevov said. 

Ultimately, the team hopes to keep building on their tool by eventually turning their chemical reaction into a catalytic process, a method that would allow scientists to speed up other chemical reactions by providing an energy-saving way to do so.

“We’re working on making it so much more efficient,” Sevov said. 

Other co-authors include Samir Al Zubaydi, Shivam Waske, Hunter Starbuck, Mayukh Majumder and Curtis E. Moore from Ohio State, as well as Volkan Akyildiz from Ataturk University and Dipannita Kalyani from Merck & Co., Inc. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award. 

In their study, recently published in Nature Catalysis, researchers demonstrated that carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, can be converted into a type of liquid fuel called methanol in a highly efficient manner. 

This process happened by taking cobalt phthalocyanine (CoPc) molecules and spreading them evenly on carbon nanotubes, graphene-like tubes that have unique electrical properties. On their surface was an electrolyte solution, which, by running an electrical current through it, allowed CoPc molecules to take electrons and use them to turn carbon dioxide into methanol. 

Using a special method based on in-situ spectroscopy to visualize the chemical reaction, researchers for the first time saw those molecules convert themselves into either methanol or carbon monoxide, which is not the desired product. They found that which path the reaction takes is decided by the environment where the carbon dioxide molecule reacts.

Tuning this environment by controlling how the CoPc catalyst was distributed on the carbon nanotube surface allowed carbon dioxide to be as much as eight times more likely to produce methanol, a discovery that could increase the efficiency of other catalytic processes and have a widespread impact on other fields, said Robert Baker, co-author of the study and a professor in chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University.  

“When you take carbon dioxide and convert it to another product, there are many different molecules you can make,” he said. “Methanol is definitely one of the most desirable because it has such a high energy density and can be used directly as an alternative fuel.” 

While transforming waste molecules into useful products isn’t a new phenomenon, until now, researchers have often been unable to watch how the reaction actually takes place, a crucial insight into being able to optimize and improve the process. 

“We might empirically optimize how something works, but we don’t really have an understanding of what makes it work, or what makes one catalyst work better than another catalyst,” said Baker, who specializes in surface chemistry, the study of how chemical reactions change when they occur on the face of different objects. “These are very difficult things to answer.”

But with the help of special techniques and computer modeling, the team has come significantly closer to grasping the complex process. In this study, researchers used a new type of vibrational spectroscopy, which allowed them to see how molecules behave on the surface, said Quansong Zhu, the lead author of the study and former Ohio State Presidential Scholar whose challenging measurements were vital to the discovery.

“We could tell by their vibrational signatures that it was the same molecule sitting in two different reaction environments,” said Zhu. “We were able to correlate that one of those reaction environments was responsible for producing methanol, which is valuable liquid fuel.” 

According to the study, deeper analysis also found these molecules were directly interacting with supercharged particles called cations that enhanced the process of methanol formation. 

More research is needed to learn more about what else these cations enable, but such a finding is key to achieving a more efficient way to create methanol, said Baker. 

“We’re seeing systems that are very important and learning things about them that have been wondered about for a long time,” said Baker. “Understanding the unique chemistry that happens at a molecular level is really important to enabling these applications.”

Besides being a low-cost fuel for vehicles like planes, cars and shipping boats, methanol produced from renewable electricity could also be utilized for heating and power generation, and to advance future chemical discoveries.

“There’s a lot of exciting things that can come next based on what we’ve learned here, and some of that we’re already starting to do together,” said Baker. “The work is ongoing.”

Co-authors include Conor L. Rooney and Hailiang Wang from Yale University, Hadar Shema and Elad Gross from Hebrew University, and Christina Zeng and Julien A. Panetier from Binghamton University. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) International Collaboration. 

Invented nearly a century ago, per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, also known as “forever chemicals,” were once widely used to create products such as cookware, waterproof clothing and personal care items. Today, scientists understand that exposure to PFAS can cause a number of human health issues such as birth defects and cancer. But because the bonds inside these chemicals don’t break down easily, they’re notoriously difficult to remove from the environment.

Such difficulties have led researchers at The Ohio State University to study how ultrasonic degradation, a process that uses sound to degrade substances by cleaving apart the molecules that make them up, might work against different types and  concentrations of these chemicals.

By conducting experiments on lab-made mixtures containing three differently sized compounds of fluorotelomer sulfonates – PFAS compounds typically found in firefighting foams – their results showed that over a period of three hours, the smaller compounds degraded much faster than the larger ones. This is in contrast to many other PFAS treatment methods in which smaller PFAS are actually more challenging to treat.

“We showed that the challenging smaller compounds can be treated, and more effectively than the larger compounds,” said co-author of the study Linda Weavers, a professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at The Ohio State University. “That’s what makes this technology potentially really valuable.”

The research was published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry A.

One of only a few studies to probe into how ultrasound might be used to rid our surroundings of toxic PFAS chemicals, this paper is an extension of previous research of Weavers’ that determined that the same technology could also degrade pharmaceuticals in municipal tap and wastewater.

“PFAS compounds are unique because many of the destruction technologies that we use in environmental engineering for other hard-to-remove compounds don’t work for them,” Weavers said. “So we really need to be developing an array of technologies to figure out which ones might be useful in different applications.”

Unlike other traditional destruction methods that attempt to break down PFAS by reacting them with oxidizing chemicals, ultrasound works to purify these substances by emitting sound at a frequency much lower than typically used for medical imaging, said Weavers. Ultrasound’s low-pitched pressure wave compresses and pulls apart the solution, which then creates pockets of vapor called cavitation bubbles.

“As the bubbles collapse, they gain so much momentum and energy that it compresses and over-compresses, heating up the bubble,” said Weavers.

Much like powerful combustion chambers, the temperatures inside these tiny bubbles can reach up to 10,000 Kelvin, and it’s this heat that breaks down the stable carbon-fluorine bonds that PFAS are made of and renders the byproducts essentially harmless. Unfortunately, this degradation method can be costly and extremely energy intensive, but with few other options, it may be something the public needs to consider investing in to protect groundwater for drinking and other uses, said Weavers.

While manufacturing industries are starting to move away from making use of PFAS, regulatory agencies are working to heighten public awareness about how to avoid them. Earlier this year, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency proposed the National Primary Drinking Water Regulation (NPDWR), which would require public water systems to monitor for certain PFAS, notify the public of these levels and take measures to reduce them if they’re over a certain limit.

Because ultrasound is so effective at cleaning PFAS from solutions, the study concludes that scientists and government agencies should consider using it in future treatment technology development as well as along with other combined-treatment approaches.

Though Weavers’ research is not ready to be scaled up to aid in larger anti-contamination efforts, the study does note that their work could be the opening move toward creating small, high-energy water filtration devices for public use inside the home.

“Our research revolves around trying to think about how you scale to something bigger and what you need to make it work,” said Weavers. “These compounds are found everywhere, so as we learn more about them, understanding how they can degrade and break down is important for furthering the science.”

Other co-authors are William P. Fagan and Shannon R. Thayer, both of Ohio State.

The key is to make the artificial blood molecules big enough so they don’t leak from blood vessels into tissue and cause dangerous cardiovascular side effects, notes a new study led by researchers from The Ohio State University. 

Although blood loss is typically treated by transfusing units of donated blood, in cases where transfusions aren’t readily available or time is too limited to screen for patient blood type compatibility (such as in certain rural areas or on the battlefield), artificial blood products offer medical professionals more flexibility for treatment. In clinical trials, previous generations of these blood substitutes often resulted in several poor health outcomes, as individuals experienced symptoms ranging from narrowing of blood vessels and high blood pressure to tissue injury.

In this study, researchers found that a certain sized fraction of red blood cell substitute can provide a range of health benefits, and can decrease the risk of cardiovascular side effects – if its components are the right size. 

“We found that as you make the red blood cell substitute molecules bigger, you have fewer side effects,” said Alisyn Greenfield, lead author of the study and a PhD student in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State. “There’s even a particular size range that has better benefits when it comes to the kind of cardiovascular effects that were seen with previous generations of this material.” 

Their findings were published in the journal Biomacromolecules.

The researchers tested a red blood cell substitute called polymerized human hemoglobin – PolyhHb. Although past commercial versions have been explored in clinical settings, they did not receive FDA approval due to their many side effects. 

To find a better solution, the team focused on identifying a target therapeutic size of PolyhHb by synthesizing material in four different-sized brackets and exploring the cardiovascular response in guinea pig models. Findings showed that the largest-sized brackets did not escape the blood vessels, or cause the blood vessels to narrow and elicit high blood pressure.  

Study senior author Andre Palmer, professor of chemical and biochemical engineering at Ohio State, said the antioxidant status of guinea pigs is more similar to humans than other rodents, making them a good model for the study.  

While these red blood cell substitutes aren’t meant to replace blood entirely, this research highlights the potential of these materials. If transfused into a person soon after injury, they could be used to buy the person enough time to be transported to a medical facility to receive a blood transfusion, said Palmer.   

Additionally, because blood substitutes aren’t made with any surface antigens or markers on the outside of the red blood cell’s membrane, they can be transfused into anyone, regardless of their blood type. That said, artificial blood is still a long way from commercialization.  

Even though it can be stored at room temperature for several years compared to the 42-day storage period for donated blood, artificial blood doesn’t come close to replicating the lifetime of real blood cells, said Palmer. Once produced, a typical red blood cell circulates in the human body for a period of about 120 days, yet the materials in current blood substitutes only have a half-life of about 24 hours after administration. 

Further study is needed to more accurately determine the red blood cell substitute’s safety and efficacy in clinical settings. “By performing this study, we demonstrated that we can improve upon what currently exists and, hopefully, be able to move our research forward and translate those materials into the clinic,” said Greenfield.  

This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health. Other Ohio State co-authors were Xiangming Gu, Ahmad Yahya, Amid Vahedi and Mohd. Asim Khan. Other co-authors came from the University of Maryland. 

In the study, published online today in the journal Nature Chemistry, an international team of researchers isolated a key molecule involved in the synthesis of melanin, a substance in the human body that produces pigmentation in the hair and skin and protects the cells from being damaged by ultraviolet radiation from the sun. The molecule they studied has many of the physical properties of eumelanin, a type of melanin that typically produces only black and brown pigments. 

Despite what researchers know about melanin, its chemical structure has remained elusive, said Bern Kohler, an Ohio Eminent Scholar and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University, one of three senior authors on the study.  

“Melanin is literally as plain as the nose on our face and we still don't know exactly what it's made of and how it works,” said Kohler. “It's thought to be a material made of large numbers of interacting components, and so what my collaborators and I are trying to get at is, what are melanin’s underlying chemical units and what are the interactions that give rise to its properties?”

In the lab, melanin can be made naturally from just a few simple chemical substances that combine or react to form the pigmented material. Thanks to the efforts of Jean-Philip Lumb of McGill University and Lluis Blancafort of the University of Girona, the team was able to successfully synthesize and analyze one of its molecule-sized ingredients. They found that it had many of the same properties as the final product melanin, even without further transformation.

“Melanin is like a complex dish that you cook from just a few ingredients,” said Kohler. “Given that melanin granules in skin contain billions of atoms, it was surprising to see melanin-like properties emerge in a molecule containing only a few dozen atoms.”

As a spectroscopist – or a scientist who investigates the interactions between matter and light – Kohler said what he finds most remarkable is the brilliant green color of the melanin-like molecule, which is able to absorb deep red light. 

“That's very hard for a small molecule to do,” said Kohler. “This is one of the smallest organic molecules known that can absorb long wavelengths all the way out into the infrared.”

Its unusual optical and magnetic properties make the melanin-mimicking molecule an attractive prospect for advancing bioelectronics research, a field that aims to connect electronics and living biological materials to fabricate new technologies or therapies for medical treatments, said Kohler.

The study results also suggest that harnessing the power of melanin could be used to change the way humans harvest energy from our environment.

“Like solar energy conversion, part of our strategy for alternative energy is to absorb photons of light from across the solar spectrum,” Kohler said. “That’s what eumelanin does, rather naturally.”

Future research will aim to study melanin-like properties in similar kinds of molecules. Such strides could offer greater accessibility to synthetic biomaterial alternatives, but in the short term, Kohler imagines the team’s work uncovering a melanin-like molecule will inspire other labs to look more closely at how melanin’s properties may emerge from other unexpectedly small molecular units. 

“Our team is excited that further progress at understanding the structure of melanin can succeed by studying tailorable small molecules like the one we write about in this paper,” he said. “The chemistry is still tremendously complex, but interest should grow in small molecules as melanin models and the promise they hold for generating new, melanin-inspired materials.”

Other co-authors were Lilia Kinziabulatova and Marisa Barilla of Ohio State, Xueqing Wang and Haiyan Huang of McGill University, and Marco Bortoli and Anju Manickoth of the University of Girona. 

It has to do with a concept called chirality. A geometric property inherent to certain molecules, chirality can dictate a molecule’s shape, chemical reactivity, and how it interacts with other matter. Chirality is also sometimes referred to as handedness, as it can be best described as the dichotomy between our hands: Though they are not identical, the right and the left hand are mirror images of each other, and can’t be superimposed, or exactly overlaid on one another.

In the journal ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, researchers now propose a new model of how the molecules of life may have developed their “handedness.”

This sense of a molecule’s right- or left-handedness plays a huge role in biochemistry and is especially important when it comes to helping humans develop drugs to treat molecular diseases, such as cancer. While a molecule in one form might be of therapeutic value to humans, its opposite-handed twin might be inactive or cause unintended birth defects. What’s more, as nature often demonstrates a preference for specific symmetries, the molecules that underpin all living beings have only been found to display a strong preference for one form of handedness over another. 

Ultimately, although the role of chirality is now greatly recognized, there is no clear consensus among scientists as to how this preferred symmetry may have initially arisen, said co-author of the study James Cowan, a distinguished university professor emeritus in chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State.

“The reason why many of the key molecules of life only have one preferred handedness is a bit of a mystery,” said Cowan. “As to how it came about, the process must reflect something very special about how early chemistry developed a preferred form of nucleic acids and proteins.”

Cowan and co-author R.J Furnstahl, a professor of physics at Ohio State, describe a model where the development of preferred chiral molecules evolves through a fundamental interaction called the weak nuclear force. The second weakest interaction after gravity, it’s a phenomenon which causes protons to decay into neutrons and vice versa. This challenges previous thoughts on the origin of Earth’s chirality, which suggested it came about following meteorite impacts on the planet during its early formation. Instead, their work is consistent with the RNA-based chemistry in the “RNA World model,” in which the formation of ribonucleic acids was a key step in how all the other molecules of life might have been made.

By combining elements of biology, nuclear physics and chemistry, Cowan and Furnstahl provide an explanation for how a preferred handedness in the building blocks of life evolved not from extraterrestrial molecules, or by random chance, but through a fundamental force of nature that laid the molecular foundation that would eventually come to support and influence life on Earth.

“Imagine a universe where there was a right glove, but no left glove,” said Cowan. “Over the course of a few million years, this preference for a particular hand becomes apparent, and is then repeated and amplified, and eventually allowed to dominate.”

The study concludes that the weak nuclear force, in tandem with Earth-abundant metals like calcium, which amplifies the effect, could have acted like a seed, influencing prebiotic chemistry in a way that prompted preferred chirality to emerge symbiotically with the rest of nature’s early building blocks.

“Based in fundamental physics, our model generates the actual chemical building blocks with a preferred handedness that could have resulted in the life processes we know today, and does it in a way that’s very satisfying,” said Cowan.

Though their research is purely theoretical at the moment, the study notes that with the right technology, there are a few ways their mechanism could be proven. Unfortunately for researchers, it’s way too tedious a process to recreate primordial timescales in the lab.

“In terms of making the molecules that living organisms are based on, those reactions are occurring on the timeframes of hundreds of thousands of years,” said Cowan. “Of course, we don’t have that long to wait around to test the hypothesis in the lab.”

While extensive chemistry experiments could potentially be done with the help of heavy elements like uranium, which could help yield a result in only a few years, another more practical way to test the hypothesis behind their research might be to use spectroscopy – splitting light into different wavelengths to study its properties – to look at nearby exoplanets to try and determine if the molecules there exhibit a preferred “handedness” as well.

“If there was a preferred handedness, and it was the same type that we would observe on Earth, then that would be very, very strong evidence that nature actually directs the evolution of biological chemistry,” said Cowan.

Going forward, one of their biggest challenges in advancing the work is waiting for the technology needed to do these experiments to catch up, Cowan said. “We were able to establish a feasible physical mechanism that describes how this process could be carried out, but the next obstacle is finding the best way to study it experimentally.”

For years, scientists knew that mitochondria – specialized structures inside cells in the body that are essential for respiration and energy production – were involved in the assembly and movement of iron-sulfur cofactors, some of the most essential compounds in the human body. But until now, researchers didn’t understand how exactly the process worked. 

New research, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that these cofactors are moved with the help of a substance called glutathione, an antioxidant that helps prevent certain types of cell damage by transporting these essential iron cofactors across a membrane barrier. 

Glutathione is especially useful as it aids in regulating metals like iron, which is used by red blood cells to make hemoglobin, a protein needed to help carry oxygen throughout the body, said James Cowan, co-author of the study and a distinguished university professor emeritus in chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State.

“Iron compounds are critical for the proper functioning of cellular biochemistry, and their assembly and transport is a complex process,” Cowan said. “We have determined how a specific class of iron cofactors is moved from one cellular compartment to another by use of complex molecular machinery, allowing them to be used in multiple steps of cellular chemistry.”

Iron-sulfur clusters are an important class of compounds that carry out a variety of metabolic processes, like helping to transfer electrons in the production of energy and making key metabolites in the cell, as well as assisting in the replication of our genetic information. 

“But when these clusters don't work properly, or when key proteins can’t get them, then bad things happen,” Cowan said.

If unable to function, the corrupted protein can give rise to several diseases, including rare forms of anemia, Friedreich’s ataxia (a disorder that causes progressive nervous system damage), and a multitude of other metabolic and neurological disorders. 

So to study how this essential mechanism works, researchers began by taking a fungus called C. thermophilum, identifying the key protein molecule of interest, and producing large quantities of that protein for structural determination. The study notes that the protein they studied within C. thermophilum is essentially a cellular twin of the human protein ABCB7, which transfers iron-sulfur clusters in people, making it the perfect specimen to study iron-sulfur cluster export in people. 

By using a combination of cryo-electron microscopy and computational modeling, the team was then able to create a series of structural models detailing the pathway that mitochondria use to export the iron cofactors to different locations inside the body. While their findings are vital to learning more about the basic building blocks of cellular biochemistry, Cowan said he’s excited to see how their discovery could later advance medicine and therapeutics. 

“By understanding how these cofactors are assembled and moved in human cells, we can lay the groundwork for determining how to prevent or alleviate symptoms of certain diseases,” he said. “We can also use that fundamental knowledge as the foundation for other advances in understanding cellular chemistry.” 

Co-authors included Amber L. Hendricks from Ohio State, Yong Wang from Zhejiang University, Rhiza Lyne E. Villones and Gabriele Meloni from The University of Texas at Dallas, Kaituo Wang from Copenhagen University and Ping Li, Karin Lindkvist-Petersson and Pontus Gourdon, all from Lund University.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health. 

“Carbenes have an incredible amount of energy in them,” said David Nagib, co-author of the study and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State. “The value of that is they can do chemistry that you just cannot do any other way.”

In fact, members of the Nagib Lab specialize in harnessing reagents with such high   chemical energy, and have helped invent a multitude of new substances and techniques that would otherwise be chemically unobtainable.

In this study, the researchers developed catalysts made out of cheap, Earth-abundant metals, like iron, copper and cobalt, and combined them to facilitate their new method of harnessing carbene.

They were able to successfully use this new strategy to channel the power of reactive carbenes to fabricate valuable molecules on a larger scale and much more quickly than traditional methods. Nagib compared this leap to engineers figuring out how to use steel to build skyscrapers rather than brick and mortar.

For instance, one molecular feature that chemists have been hard-pressed to create is cyclopropane, a small, strained ring of twisted chemical bonds found in some medicines. More recently, cyclopropane has been used as a key ingredient in the oral antiviral pill called Paxlovid. Used to treat COVID-19, the pill reduces the severity of the disease by stopping the virus from replicating, rather than killing it outright. 

Although the cyclopropane needed to fabricate the drug has been difficult to create in large quantities, Nagib said he believes his lab’s new method could be applied to create the drug more quickly and at a larger scale. “Our new method will enable better access to dozens of types of cyclopropanes for incorporation into all kinds of medicines to treat disease,” he said. 

While the team’s research does have potential applications outside the pharmaceutical realm, like agrochemicals, Nagib said he’s most passionate about how their tool could speed up the discovery of new, targeted medicines. “You could technically apply our methods to anything,” he said. “But in our lab, we're more interested in accessing new types of more potent drugs.” 

Nagib predicts that, using the process his team developed, a chemical reagent that currently takes 10 or 12 steps to make (by explosive intermediates) could be done in four or five, knocking off nearly 75% of the time it takes to fabricate.

Overall, Nagib said he hopes this research will help other chemists do their work.

“There are lots of really great scientists around the world who do this kind of chemistry and using our tool they could potentially have a safer lab,” Nagib said. “The flavor of science that we do, the most satisfying reward is when other people use our chemical methods to make important molecules better.” 

Other co-authors were Lumin Zhang, a former postdoctoral fellow, as well as Bethany M. DeMuynck, Alyson N. Paneque and Joy E. Rutherford, all graduate students in the department of chemistry and biochemistry and members of the Nagib Lab. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation. 

All cells need energy to survive, but because the kinds of chemicals available during the planet’s early days were so limited compared to today’s vast scope of chemical diversity, multicellular organisms had a lot less energy to build the complex organic structures that make up the world we know today. 

New research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides evidence that many of the organisms borne from Earth’s primordial soup heavily relied on metal molecules, specifically nickel, to help store and expend energy. 

Current theories about how microbial life arose suggest that while cells used carbon dioxide and hydrogen as a fuel source, they also inhabited areas rich in reduced metals like iron and nickel. These first chemical reactions were also largely driven by an enzyme called acetyl coenzyme A synthase, or ACS, a molecule essential for energy production and forming new chemical bonds. 

But for years, scientists in the field have been split on how this enzyme actually works – whether the chemical reactions it spurred could be assembled randomly or if its chemical constructions followed a strict roadmap. Hannah Shafaat, co-author of the study and a professor in chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University, said her team’s artificial model of the enzyme reveals a lot about how its native ancestor might have acted during Earth’s first few billion years.

Compared to what scientists find in nature, this model protein is much easier to study and manipulate. Because of this, the team was able to conclude that ACS does, in fact, have to build molecules one step at a time. Such information is crucial to understanding how organic chemistry on Earth began to mature. 

“Rather than taking the enzyme and stripping it down, we’re trying to build it from the bottom up,” Shafaat said. “And knowing that you have to do things in the right order can basically be a guide for how to recreate it in the lab.” 

As scientists hope to understand what may have emerged first out of the primordial soup, Shafaat said the study demonstrated that even simple enzymes like their model could have supported early life. Shafaat, who has worked on the project for nearly five years, said that while the study did run into some challenges, the lessons the team learned were worth it in the long run. 

In addition to being important for understanding primordial chemistry, their findings have broad implications for other fields, including the energy sector, Shafaat said. “If we can understand how nature figured out how to use these compounds billions and billions of years ago, we can harness some of those same ideas for our own alternative energy devices,” she said. 

At the moment, one of the biggest challenges the energy sector faces is making liquid fuel. Yet this study could be the first step in finding a natural energy source that could replace the gasoline and oil humans overuse, Shafaat said. Now, her team is working on streamlining their product, but will continue to investigate whether there are other primeval secrets their enzyme might divulge. 

Co-authors were Anastasia C. Manesis and Alina Yerbulekova of Ohio State, and Jason Shearer of Trinity University. This work was supported by the U.S Department of Energy. 

In a new study published in the journal Science, researchers used electricity to develop a tool that may make it easier and cheaper to fabricate the compounds used in pharmaceuticals and other natural products. Yet this invention, too, joins the ranks of the many unanticipated innovations that came before it.  

Christo Sevov, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University, was part of a team that initially sought to prepare a catalyst that could be activated by electricity to make the bonds of the targeted drug compounds. 

Their study’s findings suggest a general guideline for taking inexpensive and widely abundant materials, and using them to create complex compounds that wouldn’t normally work together. Streamlining this chemical process could allow researchers to safely create more valuable products with fewer steps and less waste.  

But to actually facilitate their chemical reactions in the lab, instead of using high-energy reagents, or added substances, as is customary when synthesizing materials, Sevov’s team utilized the power of electricity.

Because electricity is ecologically sustainable, there’s recently been a push in the industrial sector to move toward the use of electrochemistry to foster chemical change. 

“It's a very attractive way to do chemistry these days, because we have total control over how we run these reactions,” Sevov said.  

The research has broad applications in medicine, and in the creation of products like agrichemicals (like pesticides or herbicides) and certain plastics. But Sevov’s discovery, while seemingly serendipitous, took lots of hard work and patience to get right. 

“It took maybe three months of testing different combinations of additives, until all of a sudden something worked and it worked phenomenally well,” Sevov said. “Getting to that complex allowed us to stitch together materials that are very difficult to stitch together under normal circumstances.”

Because the precious metals many chemists use as catalysts can cost a pretty penny, Sevov’s team chose a nickel atom as the catalyst for their tool. In chemistry, catalysts are responsible for increasing or decreasing the rate of the chemical reaction as they make and create bonds. 

“Being able to use catalysts that are very inexpensive, like nickel, is very beneficial to everyone in the entire community in general,” he said. Besides being a cheap alternative for businesses that produce pharmaceuticals, plastics and polymers, using nickel also keeps the cost of food products down. For example, if farmers had to pay more for the agrichemicals these chemical reactions help create, the price of their crop would rise proportionally, Sevov said.

To build on their research further, the team will go on to collaborate with Merck, a multinational pharmaceutical company, to try creating other products using more difficult reactions and more complex molecules. But with their latest discovery, Sevov said that he’s optimistic that their work will start to create brand new avenues in the field of chemistry.

“We’re going to take advantage of this really reactive intermediate and see how far we can run with it,” Sevov said. 

Co-authors include Taylor Hamby and Matthew Lalama of Ohio State. This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health.