Buckminsterfullerane: the inside story

The stereoisomers of fully reduced buckminsterfullerene C(60)H(60) have been investigated with the molecular mechanics program MM3. Although it might be expected that chemical reduction would deliver all of the hydrogens to the outside, the symmetric structure produced in this way is predicted to be highly strained. Moving just one hydrogen to the inside is predicted to decrease the energy by 53 kilocalories (kcal) per mole. Putting additional hydrogens on the inside further lowers the predicted energy (depending on the steric relations between them). The miniimum energy isomer is predicted to have ten hydrogens inside with C(1) symmetry and to have an energy 400 kcal/mol less than that of the all-outside isomer. These results suggest that a process which could achieve isomerization would produce a mixture of isomers, most of which with ten hydrogens on the inside.     

Poster: the macaque genome

The rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) facilitates an extraordinary range of biomedical and basic research, and the publication of the genome only makes it a more powerful model for studies of human disease; moreover, the macaque's position relative to humans and chimpanzees affords the opportunity to learn about the processes that have shaped the last 25 million years of primate evolution. To allow users to explore these themes of the macaque genome, Science has created a special interactive version of the poster published in the print edition of the 13 April 2007 issue. The interactive version includes additional text and exploration, as well as embedded video featuring seven scientists discussing the importance of the macaque and its genome sequence in studies of biomedicine and evolution. We have also created an accompanying teaching resource, including a lesson plan aimed at teachers of advanced high school life science students, for exploring what a comparison of the macaque and human genomes can tell us about human biology and evolution. These items are free to all site visitors.