Scientists Resurrect 160-Million-Year-Old Molecules With Surprising Power Against Superbugs - SciTechDaily

The Nobel prize in chemistry 2026 has been awarded to two scientists for discoveries that showed how chemical reactions can produce an overwhelming excess of one of two mirror image forms of a molecule. Henri B Kagan at Paris-Sud University in France and Kensō Soai at Tokyo University of Science in Japan have been awarded the prize “for the discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis”. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the winners in Stockholm, Sweden, on Wednesday. They will each receive an equal share of a prize of 12m Swedish kronor (about £900,000). Many molecules, including amino acids that form the building blocks of proteins, can exist in two forms that contain the same atoms, but are mirror images of one another, much like a person’s left and right hands. This property is known as chirality. However, the chemistry underpinning life is surprisingly “homochiral”, or same-handed. Proteins are built almost exclusively from L-amino acids, while the sugars that form the backbone of DNA and RNA have the opposite D- configuration.

An illustration showing a chip and DNA strands inside a water drop. Image credits: ZME Science To you or me, a tiny drop of water looks ordinary. There seems to be nothing special about it. However, some researchers see a whole computing device inside a drop. There is no silicon processor inside, but they claim that the billions of DNA molecules in a water drop can interact, process information, and produce an answer.