In 2016, humanity is getting closer to science fiction. For the first time, a living organism made a silicon-carbon bond. Before this scientific performance, it was only inside of chemistry labs that this ever happened. However, a team of researchers at Caltech persuaded a bacterial protein into creating the man-made bonds, which could significantly impact the way several industries work.
There are synthetic silicon-carbon bonds that are currently employed in distinct domains, from pharmaceutics to TV screens and computer chips components. However, there has never been a natural chemical reaction between the two, until this new research, published Nov. 24 in the journal Science.
Innovation Research Of Molecular Bonds
The research recently won Caltech's Dow Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge Award (SISCA) prize, proving that biology can be used to create these bonds naturally, in a more environmentally friendly manner and most likely in a less expensive way, too.
The biological molecules that are known to us, from proteins to the DNA, are usually formed within a string of carbon atoms that are bonded together. When this process is complete, the enzymes that exist in every living being from people to plants attach carbon molecules to one another.
However, there has never been an enzyme observed to attach a carbon molecule to a silicon molecule. Since silicon is one of the most abundant elements in our planet's crust, along with oxygen, there are plenty of sources to get it from, which could help the process.
Because carbon and silicon are very similar elements, this finding is all the more surprising. Of course, it was used in the Star Trek universe, but there's a long way from science fiction to real life.
The Bond Catalysis
"No living organism is known to put silicon-carbon bonds together, even though silicon is so abundant, all around us, in rocks and all over the beach," noted Jennifer Kan, lead author of the study.
In order to help catalyze the chemical bond, the researchers used a scientific method named directed evolution, one that Frances Arnold, Caltech's Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering, pioneered in the 1990s.
The scientists' objective was to persuade the enzyme to create a bond like never before, for which purpose they used a protein named cytochrome c, which usually shuttles electrons to other proteins. However, the researchers have found that it does act as an enzyme when it comes to silicon-carbon bonds, although at very low levels.
