Consider a short piece of rope—could you guess which knots are more likely to form if you crumple and shake it? Synthetic chemists have long been working on a molecular version of this problem, and so ...

Knots are used in all sorts of ways, every day. They ensure safety both indoors and for outdoor activities such as boating or sailing, are used as surgical sutures, as decorations, and they can even ...

Many of the processes essential to life involve proteins -- long molecules which 'fold' into three-dimensional shapes allowing them to perform their biological role. Many of the processes essential to ...

Knots are everywhere—from tangled headphones to DNA strands packed inside viruses—but how an isolated filament can knot itself without collisions or external agitation has remained a longstanding ...

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Why Trust Us? For decades chemists have tried to make smaller and smaller molecular knots in an ...

(Nanowerk News) Consider a short piece of rope: could you guess which knots are more likely to form if you crumple and shake it? Synthetic chemists have long been working on a molecular version of ...

Using computational predictive models, the scientists identified a shortlist, a kind of 'periodic table', of the most designable knot types, i.e. those knots that could easily self-assemble under ...

Like a scouting handbook for the molecular realm, a new chart reveals how to tie molecules up in knots of increasing complexity. Mathematicians have cataloged billions of distinct knot types, but ...