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Recent Advances in Nanostructured Enzyme Catalysis for Chemical Synthesis in Organic Solvents
Published in Grunwald Peter, Biocatalysis and Nanotechnology, 2017
Zheng Liu, Jun Ge, Diannan Lu, Guoqiang Jiang, Jianzhong Wu
The man-made nanomaterials, together with today’s biotechnological tools, offer unprecedented opportunities to reengineer enzyme catalysts for industrial applications. Enzymatic catalysis for chemical synthesis in organic solvent is just one of them. While successful examples remain limited, we expect more exciting progress in the future with the rapid advances in molecular engineering fundamentals. By combining theory and experiments, we will be able to elucidate the microscopic details underlying interaction of nanostructure with enzyme and the consequential effects on the structure and reaction kinetics. The fundamental studies will allow us to develop novel enzyme- catalyzed processes and associated apparatus for large-scale production of fine chemicals with good performance. For industrial applications, significant hurdles remain in terms of enzyme activity, reducibility, and ease-of-operation and new strategies to overcome these huddles are of great and urgent need. Promising solutions may arise, for example, from recent advancements in microfluidic techniques. These new techniques have proven effectiveness in controlled fluid flow, high-performance mass and heat transport at low shearing force, and thus may offer novel approaches to both production of nanostructured enzyme catalysts with well-defined structure and properties and implementation of the enzymatic reactions in organic media.
Putting visions in their place: responsible research and innovation for energy system decarbonization
Published in Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2023
Christopher Groves, Karen Henwood, Nick Pidgeon, Catherine Cherry, Erin Roberts, Fiona Shirani, Gareth Thomas
RRI has been interpreted as resting upon principles such as anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion and responsiveness (Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013). Hermeneutic and normative knowledge can therefore be seen as widening the lens of anticipation, increasing reflexivity, as well as requiring greater inclusion. They mean that the desirability of socio-technical visions can be assessed in relation to a wider set of values, priorities and purposes. However, there are important distinctions to be made between different ‘species’ of socio-technical visions that may influence what kinds of hermeneutic and normative knowledge become relevant. For example, visions of energy system decarbonization differ in crucial respects from visions of, say, nanotechnology-based molecular engineering or synthetic biology. First, the socio-technical configurations that are constitutive of visions of energy decarbonization are dependent on being sited in specific places, and may themselves reflect differences in socio-geographical conditions between particular places (such as rural and urban locations nation). Second, and given these characteristics of energy system visions, questions arise regarding who should be included, what contexts hermeneutic and normative knowledge should encompass, and how they can best be engaged with as part of RRI processes.
Joan Henri van der Waals (1920–2022)
Published in Molecular Physics, 2022
Joan (Koninklijke Shell Laboratory, Amsterdam) was the founding Editor of Molecular Physics, launched in 1958, together with H. Christopher Longuet-Higgins (Editor 1958–1961, University of Cambridge). As Joan and Christopher remarked in their editorial [1], the discipline of molecular physics occupies a key position at the frontier between the physical sciences (chemistry and physics), molecular engineering, and now increasingly biology. The key goal of a molecular approach is based on understanding and describing the link between the structure and properties of molecules and the behaviour of the material at the macroscopic level. Christopher’s perspective came from a firm grounding in theoretical chemistry and spectroscopy (he undertook his doctoral training with Charles A. Coulson in the early days of valence bond theory), and was complementary to that of Joan which was shaped by the long tradition of the Dutch school in thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and phase equilibria; the late Nobel Prize winner Johannes D. van der Waals was a nephew of Joan’s great-grandfather (Joan is Johannes’ first cousin twice removed). The research contributions published in Molecular Physics to this day very much retain this important mix of quantum chemistry, spectroscopy, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics.
Investigations on discotic liquid crystals
Published in Liquid Crystals, 2020
The research in my group is concerned with the design and synthesis of various liquid crystalline materials. We are interested in understanding the structure–property relationships in these intriguing self-assembling supramolecular architectures. Our research objectives are: design and synthesis of novel liquid crystalline materials; development of new synthetic routes for the synthesis of LCs; search for new reagents for the synthesis of LCs; molecular engineering of various mesophases; synthesis, characterisation and incorporation of various nanoparticles in the supramolecular order of LCs to hybridise their properties; and green chemistry approaches to the synthesis of soft condensed matter. In this article, we have presented some aspects of our research work.