Newswise Cleaner! Faster! Cheaper! is a rallying cry for chemists working to limit the impact of their work on the environment.

Their efforts reflect the 12 guiding principles developed by chemists Paul Anastas and John Warner, who founded the green chemistry movement in the mid-1990s. Among the rules: Its better to prevent waste production than to clean it up afterward. But if there must be waste, it should be nontoxic or minimally poisonousas should the chemical products themselves. Chemical reactions should be energy efficient, for example by running at room temperature instead of being heated up. And ideally chemists should use renewable resources.

Chemistry may not be as obviously green as planting a tree, but researchers are working to make it better for the planet, one reaction at a time. Here are a few examples of how chemists funded by the National Institutes of Health are going green by improving the chemical processes used to make medicines, plastics and other products.

Water, Water Everywhere

If two chemicals are going to react, they usually need a liquid in which to do so. Often, thats a toxic solvent. When the reaction is over, the chemists have to dump the solvent or try to recycle it. A greener alternative is to start with a safer solventwater.

Bruce Lipshutz at the University of California, Santa Barbara, designed minuscule, bubble-like particles (nanoparticles) that shelter the reactions while surrounded by water. The chemicals go inside the particles, where they find the perfect environment to react together, and the product comes out. Because the reactions are so highly concentrated, they can happen at room temperature. Scientists dont have to kick-start the reactions using heat, saving time and energy.

Call in the Microbes

Another way to make reactions water-based, instead of solvent-based, is to recruit microbes to help reactions along. Scientists engineer microbes to make useful molecules, typically enzymes whose job is to carry out chemical reactions in water-based solutions. Chemists can use the microbes or the enzymes alone to speed up chemical reactions in a water solution.

For example, Jay Keasling at the University of California, Berkeley, is designing microbes to manufacture certain molecules. Several years ago, he inserted more than a dozen genes into Escherichia coli and yeast that enabled the organisms to churn out an antimalarial drug that is otherwise expensive to produce. Hes exploring a similar technique to generate HIV/AIDS drugs and environmentally friendly biofuels that might replace fossil-based fuels such as gasoline.

Shorter Syntheses

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The Greening of Chemistry