Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Chemical reactions....on chip.

stateofhack - 28-9-2009 at 10:39

http://www.physorg.com/news173281486.html

So what do you all think of this? It sounds amazing but then again loosing the "hand on knowledge" from reactions would be a shame..plus how can we be sure that the results they spit out are correct?

Picric-A - 28-9-2009 at 11:15

I doubt that will catch on... Like you say, they must perform all reactions prior to putting it on the chip and once that has been done you might as well have done it in the lab

psychokinetic - 28-9-2009 at 14:45

I'm not paying $384718975698746591876249581726459187245872308975 for a degree in chemistry to use a digital laboratory.

-.-'

-On another note, it quashes the idea of amateur discoveries. How can you discover a new property of something if it only does 'what is expected'?

[Edited on 28-9-2009 by psychokinetic]

User - 28-9-2009 at 16:19

This is wicked stuff.
Somewhat scary and fascinating too.

mr.crow - 28-9-2009 at 17:51

I believe this is for combinational chemistry, where they try out every combination to discover which drug works the best. Thats why there are so many weird permutations of different structures, like benzodiazapines

They already have robots that do combinational chemistry, but the chip uses a fraction of the enzymes they are testing. So real chemistry is still safe :)