Compound Conundrum: Chemists Turn to Modified Microscope to Fathom Deep-Sea Mystery M

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Chemists at times look to plants, sea life and other natural sources for the basic ingredients needed to develop the next breakthrough medicine. Unfortunately, nature is not always willing to easily part with its secrets, forcing scientists to rely on sophisticated imaging technology--nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy or mass spectrometry, for example--to decipher the molecular formula of newly discovered organic compounds so they can be replicated in the lab.

Sometimes these new compounds defy even the most powerful lab equipment. Researchers at the University of Aberdeen Marine Biodiscovery Center (MBC) in Scotland found this to be the case last year when studying a bacterial species-- Dermacoccus abyssi sp. nov. --found in a mud sample harvested via robotic submarine from the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench , the deepest place on Earth, at about 11,000 meters. When the sample produced a chemical compound they were not able to identify, the researchers tried high-resolution mass spectrometry to determine the chemical compound's components but were unable to figure out its exact molecular structure.

[More] (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=compound-conundrum-chemists-turn-to-modified-microscope-to-fathom-deep-sea-mystery-molecule)

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