Chemists use light to replace an oxygen atom with a nitrogen atom in a molecule
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A team of chemists at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has succeeded in pulling an oxygen atom from a molecule and replacing it with a nitrogen atom. In their study, published in the journal Science, the group used photocatalysis to edit a furan in their lab.
Ellie Plachinski and Tehshik Yoon with the University of Wisconsin–Madison, have published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the process and explaining how it could be used to change the way that drugs are made.
Prior research has shown that some complex molecules can be edited using chemical reactions, but they are few and far between. So chemists must synthesize molecules from scratch when they want to change a small part of a molecule, or even just one atom, for testing.
