Chemists build molecules by paring them down

Complex molecules, such as many drugs, can be fiddly to assemble. By binding their starting compounds in chains 1 , chemists in Denmark may have found a way speed the automated chemical synthesis of such complicated products.

Les Miranda and Morten Meldal of Carlsberg University in Copenhagen have solved the following problem. Complex molecules are usually built up from a core with several near-identical hooks on w

About half of all patients with hereditary breast or ovarian cancer have mutations in a gene called BRCA1. Now the first images of the protein the gene encodes, BRCA1, are helping researchers work out how the mutations cause human disease.

The pictures reveal fine detail of how BRCA1 interacts with other proteins. Such information should help researchers work out how BRCA1 prevents cells becoming cancerous. They suspect that it is involved in DNA repair, controlling cell division and regula

European subsidies to enhance farmland wildlife may not be working.

The effectiveness of schemes that seek to promote biodiversity by paying farmers to cut back on intensive agriculture could be called into question by some research findings from Holland.

The incentive programmes, which already cost the European Union 1.7 billion euros (US$1.5 billion) each year and are rapidly expanding in scope, are partly motivated by the desire of European governments to subsidize farmin

Mathematician Ian Stewart talks to Nature Science Update about snowflakes, sticklebacks and a new kind of science.

Ian Stewart was turned on to mathematics at the age of seven. A broken collarbone freed him from an uninspiring teacher allowing his mother to ignite his interest in numbers while he was laid up at home.

His writing career began with a series of how-to manuals for now-defunct early 1980s microcomputers. It has since broadened into popular science and science fi

Chameleons can reel in prey anywhere within two-and-a-half body lengths of their jaws. Their tongues can overcome even a bird’s weight and reluctance to be eaten. How? Muscles that are unique among backboned animals, researchers now reveal.

Anthony Herrel of the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and colleagues put crickets at different distances from the noses of two chameleon species, Chameleo calyptratus and Chameleo oustaletti. The tongues of these 12-cm-long reptiles pull at maximum stren

Sperm go slow without a crucial protein.

The discovery of a protein that is crucial to sperm swimming in mice could lead to new male or female contraceptives or fertility treatments.

The protein forms a channel through the membrane of the sperm tail. It controls the inflow of calcium ions that trigger swimming.

All humans have the gene that encodes the channel, but it is switched on only in sperm cells. This would lessen the risk of side-effects from any channel-blo