The automatic molecular assembly and selection steps exhibited by the molecules, which start as random mixtures, demonstrates a fundamental step in the evolution of life. The organization is activated by instructions which are built-in to the molecules.

New insights into the cellular signal chain through which pheromones stimulate mating in yeast have been gained by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL]. Similar signal chains are found in humans, where they are involved in many important processes such as the differentiation of nerve cells and the development of cancer.

Pheromones are like the molecules you taste as you chomp on a greasy french fry: big and fatty.

With atoms and molecules in a gas moving at thousands of kilometres per hour, physicists have long sought a way to slow them down to a few kilometres per hour to trap them.

Physicists at UC Riverside have created molecular positronium, an entirely new object in the laboratory. Briefly stable, each molecule is made up of a pair of electrons and a pair of their antiparticles, called positrons.

A University of Bath researcher has been awarded more than £1 million to study a group of molecules involved in the growth of tumours.

Known to the alchemists and long used as a detonator to set off dynamite—mercury fulminate has a checkered past. Now, more than 300 years after the discovery of this explosive compound, German researchers have been able to characterize its crystal structure and thus finally reveal the molecular structure of mercury fulminate.

Carnegie Mellon University chemists have solved a decade-long molecular mystery that could eventually help scientists develop drug therapies to treat a variety of disorders, including epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease.

Ever since the Manhattan project in World War II, actinide chemistry has been essential for nuclear science and technology. Yet scientists still seek the ability to interpret and predict chemical and physical properties of actinide compounds and materials using first principle theory.

Clemson University chemists have developed a method to dramatically improve the longevity of fluorescent nanoparticles that may someday help researchers track the motion of a single molecule as it travels through a living cell.

Could extraterrestrial life be made of corkscrew-shaped particles of interstellar dust? Intriguing new evidence of life-like structures that form from inorganic substances in space are revealed today in the New Journal of Physics. The findings hint at the possibility that life beyond earth may not necessarily use carbon-based molecules as its building blocks.

Global warming isn’t the only heat scientists are feeling. Another area in which heat flow is becoming crucial is the field of molecular electronics, where long-chain molecules attached to tiny electrodes are used to transport and switch electrons.