Нобелевские премии по химии и биологии

Press Release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016

5 October 2016

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016 to

Jean-Pierre Sauvage
University of Strasbourg, France

Sir J. Fraser Stoddart
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

and

Bernard L. Feringa
University of Groningen, the Netherlands

"for the design and synthesis of molecular machines"

Scientists

Jean-Pierre Sauvage, born 1944 in Paris, France, earned his Ph.D. from Louis Pasteur University, Strasbourg, France, under the supervision of Jean-Marie Lehn in 1971. After postdoctoral research with M. L. H. Green at Oxford University, UK, he returned to Strasbourg, where he has been CNRS Director of Research from 1979–2009 and Emeritus Professor since 2009.

Among many other honors, Sauvage has received the French Chemical Society Award in Coordination Chemistry in 1971, the CNRS Silver Medal in 1988, the Prelog Gold Medal from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 1994, and the Blaise Pascal Medal in Chemistry of the European Academy of Sciences in 2012. He is a Member of the French Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences.

Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, born 1942 in Edinburgh, UK, obtained his Ph.D. from Edinburgh University, UK, in 1966. After postdoctoral work at Queen’s University, Canada, he became Lecturer in Chemistry at Sheffield University, UK. In 1990, he moved to the Chair of Organic Chemistry at Birmingham University, UK, and was Head of the School of Chemistry there from 1993 to 1997 before moving to University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA, as the Saul Winstein Professor of Chemistry in 1997, succeeding Nobel laureate Donald Cram.
In 2002, he became the Acting Co-Director of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), Los Angeles, CA, USA, in 2003, the Fred Kavli Chair of NanoSystems Sciences and served from then through August 2007 as the Director of the CNSI. Since 2008, he is Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.

Among other honors, Stoddart received the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 2007 and was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the New Year's Honours in 2006, by Queen Elizabeth II.

Bernard L. Feringa, born 1951 in Barger-Compascuum, The Netherlands, studied chemistry at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and obtained his Ph.D. there in 1978. After working as a Research Scientist at Shell Laboratories in the Netherlands and the UK, he returned to the University of Groningen as Lecturer. In 1988, Feringa was promoted to Full Professor of Organic Chemistry and in 2004, he was named the Jacobus H. van't Hoff Distinguished Professor of Molecular Sciences.

Among many other honors, Feringa has received the Spinoza Award (the highest scientific distinction in the Netherlands), the Prelog Gold Medal, the Paracelsus Medal, the Nagoya Gold Medal, and the August Wilhelm von Hofmann Medal in 2016. He is a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. In 2008, he was appointed Academy Professor and was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands.

Feringa will speak at the Angewandte Symposium in Berlin, Germany, in September 2017.

Jean-Pierre Sauvage work

Jean-Pierre Sauvage gathers molecules around a copper ion As so often happens in research, inspiration arrived from a completely different field. Jean-Pierre Sauvage worked with photochemistry, in which chemists develop molecular complexes that can capture the energy contained in the sun’s rays and utilise it to drive chemical reactions. When JeanPierre Sauvage built a model of one of these photochemically active complexes, he suddenly saw its similarity to a molecular chain: two molecules were intertwined around a central copper ion. This insight led to a dramatic turn in the direction of Jean-Pierre Sauvage’s research. Using the photochemical complex as a model, his research group constructed one ring-shaped and one crescent-shaped molecule so that they were attracted to a copper ion (figure 1); the copper ion provided a kind of cohesive force that held the molecules together. In a second step, the group used chemistry to weld together the crescent-shaped molecule with a third molecule so a new ring was formed, thereby creating the first link in a chain. The researchers could then remove the copper ion, which had served its purpose.

Chemists talk about the yield of a reaction: the percentage of the initial molecules that form the target molecule. In previous attempts to create linked molecules, researchers had at best achieved a yield of a few per cent. Thanks to the copper ion, Sauvage was able to increase the yield to an impressive 42 per cent. Suddenly, molecular chains were more than just a curiosity. With the help of this revolutionary method, Sauvage reinvigorated the field of topological chemistry, in which researchers – often using metal ions – interlock molecules in increasingly complex structures, from long chains to complicated knots. Jean-Pierre Sauvage and J. Fraser Stoddart (we will return to him soon) are leaders in this field and their research groups have created molecular versions of cultural symbols such as the trefoil knot, Solomon’s knot and the Borromean rings (figure 2). However, aesthetic molecular knots are a diversion in the story of 2016’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry – back to molecular machinery. 

…and takes the first step towards a molecular motor Jean-Pierre Sauvage soon realised that molecular chains (called catenanes, from the Latin word for chain, catena) were not only a new class of molecule, but that he had also taken the first step towards creating a molecular machine. In order for a machine to perform a task, it must consist of several parts that can move in relation to each other. The two interlocking rings fulfilled this requirement. In 1994, Jean-Pierre Sauvage’s research group also succeeded in producing a catenane in which one ring rotated, in a controlled manner, one revolution around the other ring when energy was added. This was the first embryo of a non-biological molecular machine. The second embryo of a molecular machine was produced by a chemist who grew up on a farm without electricity or any modern-day conveniences in Scotland.

Fraser Stoddart threads a molecular ring onto a molecular axle

As a child, J. Fraser Stoddart had no television or computer. Instead, to occupy himself he did jigsaws, so training a skill that chemists need: recognising shapes and seeing how they can be linked together. He was also attracted to chemistry by the prospect of becoming a molecular artist – sculpting new shapes, ones the world had never seen before. When Fraser Stoddart developed one of the molecular creations that is the foundation of 2016’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, he also utilised chemistry’s potential for designing molecules that are attracted to each other. In 1991, his research group built an open ring that lacked electrons, and a long rod, or axle, that had electron-rich structures in two places (figure 3). When the two molecules met in a solution, electron-poor was attracted to electron-rich, and the ring threaded onto the axle. In the next step, the research group closed the opening in the ring so that it remained on the molecular axle. He had thus, with a high yield, created a rotaxane: a ring-shaped molecule that is mechanically attached to an axle. Fraser Stoddart then made use of the ring’s freedom to move along the axle. When he added heat the ring jumped forwards and backwards – like a tiny shuttle – between the two electron-rich parts of the axle (figure 3). In 1994, he could completely control this movement, thereby breaking away from the randomness that otherwise governs movements in chemical systems.

A lift, a muscle and a minuscule computer chip Since 1994, Stoddart’s research group has used various rotaxanes to construct numerous molecular machines, including a lift (2004, figure 4), which can raise itself 0.7 nanometres above a surface, and an artificial muscle (2005), where rotaxanes bend a very thin gold lamina. In partnership with other researchers, Fraser Stoddart has also developed a rotaxane-based computer chip with a 20 kB memory. The transistors on today’s computer chips are tiny, but gigantic when compared to molecule-based transistors. Researchers believe that molecular computer chips may revolutionise computer technology in the same way that silicon-based transistors once did. Jean-Pierre Sauvage has also investigated rotaxanes’ potential. In 2000, his research group succeeded in threading two looped molecules together, forming an elastic structure that is reminiscent of the filaments in a human muscle (figure 5). They’ve also built something that can be likened to a motor, where the rotaxane’s ring spins alternately in different directions. Producing motors that continually spin in the same direction has been an important goal for the art of molecular engineering. Many different attempts were made in the 1990s, but first across the line waDutchman Bernard (Ben) L. Feringa . 

Ben Feringa builds the first molecular motors.

Just like Fraser Stoddart, Ben Feringa was raised on a farm and was attracted to chemistry by its endless opportunities for creativity. As he expressed it in one interview: “Perhaps the power of chemistry is not only understanding, but also creating, making molecules and materials that never existed before…” In 1999, when Ben Feringa produced the first molecular motor, he used a number of clever tricks to get it to spin in one and the same direction. Normally, molecules’ movements are governed by chance; on average, a spinning molecule moves as many times to the right as to the left. But Ben Feringa designed a molecule that was mechanically constructed to spin in a particular direction(figure 6)

The molecule was composed of something that can be likened to two small rotor blades, two flat chemical structures that were joined with a double bond between two carbon atoms. A methyl group was attached to each rotor blade; these, and parts of the rotor blade, worked like ratchets that forced the molecule to keep rotating in the same direction. When the molecule was exposed to a pulse of ultraviolet light, one rotor blade jumped 180 degrees around the central double bond. Then the ratchet moved into position. With the next light pulse, the rotor blade jumped another 180 degrees. And so it continued, round and round in the same direction. The first motor wasn’t exactly fast, but Feringa’s research group has optimised it. In 2014 the motor rotated at a speed of 12 million revs per second. In 2011, the research group also built a four-wheel drive nanocar; a molecular chassis held together four motors that functioned as wheels. When the wheels span, the car moved forward over a surface (figure 7).

Conclusion.

Although these devices look interesting, you need to remember that one of the requirements to the Nobel laureates were the importance of discovery for science and humanity. Partly on the question "why?" said Bernard Feringa, when he was told about the award. According to the chemist, having such controllable molecular machines, it becomes possible the creation of medical nanobots. "Imagine tiny robots that the doctor of the future will be able to enter into your veins and to guide the search of cancer cells". Scientist noted that he feels the same way, probably feeling the Wright brothers after their first flight, when people asked them about that, what can be do we need flying cars.