• Question: Which molecule do you think has the most exciting development prospects, and why?

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      Asked by fangirl to Alex, Anaïs, Peter, Sarwat, Shreesha on 17 Mar 2015.
      • Photo: Peter Maskell

        Peter Maskell answered on 17 Mar 2015:

        that is hard to answer as It depends what you want to do with the molecule.

      • Photo: Alexander Henderson

        Alexander Henderson answered on 17 Mar 2015:

        That is a hard question to answer given all the possible molecules! I’m going to bend your question and change “molecule” to “concept”. The area of chemistry I work in is about synthesising molecules… it’s been a long standing dream to build robots and computers to design and make molecules – which is fairly cool I think.

      • Photo: Shreesha Bhat

        Shreesha Bhat answered on 17 Mar 2015:

        Like Peter and Alex said, its difficult to say that. However of late, I have heard a lot about molecules called rotaxanes. (google for a picture of rotaxane) Its a dumbbell shaped molecule, with another molecule spatially arranged around its stem. So, there is no bond between the two parts, but they are arranged such that one part cannot get out of the system once it gets in! (imagine the outer ends of dumbbell which are quite big) Its quite fascinating even to think that people can make such things! It has wide prospects ranging from drug delivery to electronics, so keep an eye on them!

      • Photo: Anaïs Pujol

        Anaïs Pujol answered on 17 Mar 2015:

        Hi Fangirl, interesting question. for me, G-quadruples, it is a specific folding motif that can adopt DNA and their understanding and how we can stabilise them are important for a therapeutic point of view such as cancer or Alzheimer’s disease.

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