News

The biannual magazine from the Department of Chemistry highlights our activities, focusing on our people, our teaching and our research.

A new study co-authored by York Structural Biology Laboratory’s Dr Pavol Bárdy and Mai Nguyen reveals how bacteria co-opt an ancient immune system to trigger self-destruction and spread antibiotic resistance.

A York chemical toolkit identifies xylanases matched to specific plant wastes, helping design more efficient enzyme cocktails for biofuels and biobased chemicals.

A new study unravels the hidden molecular chemistry of hyperpolarisation, paving the way for more powerful, real-time metabolic MRI scans

BN-polymers are potential pre-ceramic precursors for producing technologically important shaped boron-nitride materials. A new report now unlocks their precisely tuneable synthesis, on scale and with very small amounts of catalyst, all enabled through a detailed understanding of the catalytic mechanism.

Recently published in Nature Reviews Chemistry Julia Sarju explores the sensory landscape of chemistry labs

How does a deadly bacteria trick the human body into letting its guard down? New research reveals that MenB meningitis wears a chemical disguise in the form of a modified polysaccharide that directly flips the "off switch" on our immune cells. Working as part of a collaborative team, Jon Agirre has contributed to map this stealth mechanism with high resolution atomic detail. The breakthrough unlocks a major clue in the fight against severe infections.

By introducing a fully automated workflow to deliver highly repeatable hyperpolarisation, the Halse group has developed multi-step NMR experiments to overcome both the signal overlap and low sensitivity that occur when using compact, and relatively cheap, benchtop NMR spectrometers for mixture analysis.