Many molecules exist in forms which are essentially identical, apart from being exact mirror images of one another. It is common for these so-called chiral molecules to exist in just one form in biological systems, although scientists still don’t fully understand why. For example, although both forms of amino acid molecules — the building blocks of life itself — can be made in the laboratory, in nature they only occur in the left-handed form. The chirality of these biomolecules also strongly affects the way in which they interact with other molecules, for instance with chiral drugs. Presently, more than 50 per cent of all drugs produced are active in only one of their two handed forms.

The latest research demonstrates a rapid new technique that can be used to identify the handedness of chiral molecules with more tangible effects and a greater degree of accuracy. Mass-Selected PhotoElectron Circular Dichroism (MS-PECD) uses circularly polarised light produced by a laser to ionise the molecules — using a couple of photons to knock an electron out of the chiral molecule to leave a positively charged ion behind.By tracking the direction that the electrons take when they travel out of the molecule — either forwards or backwards along the laser beam — it is possible to distinguish between left and right handed molecules with an accuracy of up to several tens of per cent rather than a fraction of a per cent.

For the full press release in English see here at the University of Nottingham.

For the full press release in Dutch by SciTechAdvisors see here (pdf).

The full paper in Nature Communications June 2015 can be accessed as OPEN ACCESS.

In December 2012 the 25th unit of the Amsterdam Cantilever Piezo Valve was sold to a National Laboratory in USA.The Piezo Valve was developed by the group of prof. Maurice Janssen at LaserLaB Amsterdam in close collaboration with both the Mechanical and Electronics shop of the Faculty of Sciences, in particular mr. Rob Kortekaas, mr. Mario Molenaar and mr. Han Voet. The valve enables the production of intense and very short pulses of gas at high repetition rate. The instrument was developed for research at LaserLaB and reported in the literature (Rev. Sci. Instruments 80, 113303, 2009). It was decided to commercialize the instrument and the valve has now been sold to groups all over Europe, USA, China and Japan. Prof. Janssen remarked: “It is extremely rewarding that a key instrument that we developed for our own research is available to outside users. I am very pleased that leading laboratories all over the world, e.g. various Max Planck Institutes and Synchrotron facilities in Germany, Switzerland and USA, have decided to purchase our instrument. The excellent collaboration with the technical support shops of the Faculty of Sciences of VU University Amserdam makes this successful valorization project possible.