Latest Kendall Houk Stories

Diels and Alder won the Nobel; now UCLA's Kendall Houk makes the movie In 1928, chemists Otto Diels and Kurt Alder first documented diene synthesis, a chemical reaction important for synthesizing many polymers, alkaloids and steroids. Their work on this mechanism, which came to be known as the Diels–Alder reaction, won them the 1950 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Since then, the iconic reaction has become the most commonly used and studied mechanism in organic chemistry. But what happens...

UCLA nanotech research mimics enzymes in directing chemical reactionsGood chemists are passive-aggressive "” they manipulate molecules without actually touching them.In a feat of manipulating substances at the nanoscale, UCLA researchers and colleagues demonstrated a method for isolating two molecules together on a substrate and controlling how those two molecules react when excited with ultraviolet light, making detailed observations both before and after the reaction.Their research is...

Chemists from UCLA and the University of Washington have succeeded in creating "designer enzymes," a major milestone in computational chemistry and protein engineering. The research, by a UCLA chemistry group led by professor Kendall Houk and a Washington group headed by biochemist David Baker, is reported March 19 in the advance online publication of the journal Nature. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) supported the study. Designer enzymes will have...