Scorpion venom packs more than a painful sting. It’s also chock full of novel bioactive compounds—most of them polypeptides—that intrigue scientists. For the first time, researchers have identified an ...

Since the early 1800s, practitioners of organic chemistry have been fascinated with a group of plant-derived compounds called "alkaloids." Alkaloids contain at least one nitrogen atom among other ...

This video segment, adapted from NOVA uses reenactment footage to show how chemist Percy Julian completed the total synthesis of physostigmine, an alkaloid derived from the Calabar bean that could be ...