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We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

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Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#21

Post by glaugh »

dcolkitt wrote: post #10
someguy101010 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I knew the havkernews equivalent for chemistry, finance, etc. The closest thing I've found was https://www.foundmyfitness.com/news for nutrition.

Nuclear Phynance is your best bet for a HN like community in quant finance.

A semi-random example to prove the point: https://www.nuclearphynance.com/Show%20Post.aspx?PostIDKey=1...

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#22

Post by kccqzy »

Remdesivir is an analog of adenosine, one of the four building blocks of RNA. Just look at the main structure and you'll agree they look similar. It turns out the mechanism of action of this drug is that it's supposed to be confused with adenosine, so that the viral RNA replication process uses remdesivir instead of adenosine, which later breaks the RNA†.

Our body, or really, all biological processes can synthesize incredibly complicated molecules that can take human chemists a huge amount of effort to synthesize. It really is amazing how awesome our body is.

†: My description here is a dumbed down description. For a more precise description see section 2 of Arguments in favour of remdesivir for treating SARS-CoV-2 infections, Wen-Chien Ko et al, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092485792...

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#24

Post by applecrazy »

eyegor wrote: post #20

This article really reinforces my choice to drop ochem in college. It's funny how deciphering assembly code seems downright mundane compared to this jargon. Like, I get how given the process you could recreate things, or you could devise possible reactions based on electron shells and bonding tendencies, but how do researchers even figure out how to make these reactions happen? Especially when they require -100C, or…

Isn’t there analytical chemistry software?

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#25

Post by mjthrowaway1 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #10
someguy101010 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I knew the havkernews equivalent for chemistry, finance, etc. The closest thing I've found was https://www.foundmyfitness.com/news for nutrition.

Nuclear Phynance is your best bet for a HN like community in quant finance.

That community has been pretty dead for years. Used to love it.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#26

Post by abhisuri97 »

This brings me back to orgo lab. A six step synthesis was torture when you were graded by your final yield exactly bc of the compounding nature of small mistakes in each step. Even if you get fairly good yields of 80 to 90% per step, you’d end up with a 53% at best and hope to god that everyone else did equally badly so the curve would save you.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#27

Post by ebg13 »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #17
ggm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At seven hundred freaking degrees, fluorine starts to dissociate into monoatomic radicals, thereby losing its gentle and forgiving nature. Gentle and Forgiving nature...

The inimitable Martin Poliakoff demonstrates it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtWp45Eewtw

"It was much more exciting than I thought" is a great opening line.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#28

Post by mettamage »

This was a lot of fun to read and quite accessible. I remember that I was horrible at chemistry in high school, but the right things were ELI5'ed.

I like HN in general, but this particular article gave me the same feeling that I had when I first discovered HN a couple of years ago.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#29

Post by applecrazy »

mjthrowaway1 wrote: post #25
dcolkitt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear Phynance is your best bet for a HN like community in quant finance.

That community has been pretty dead for years. Used to love it.

Is there a successor to this forum? I’m a CS undergrad and kind of want to explore this field.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#30

Post by Gigablah »

eyegor wrote: post #20

This article really reinforces my choice to drop ochem in college. It's funny how deciphering assembly code seems downright mundane compared to this jargon. Like, I get how given the process you could recreate things, or you could devise possible reactions based on electron shells and bonding tendencies, but how do researchers even figure out how to make these reactions happen? Especially when they require -100C, or…

Speaking of elaborate processes, NileRed’s recent video about the laborious process of making aerogel is a fascinating watch:

https://youtu.be/Y0HfmYBlF8g

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