Another Friday, another batch of Research Highlights for you all to enjoy.

Steve’s is about a pretty clever hydrogel. Hydrogels are potential carriers for drugs, but how do you get them to release their cargo in the right place? Aptamers are the answer…

Gav has written about some work by Richard Zare’s group that looks at how viruses might ‘break in’ to cells. They used surface plasmon resonance to study a model virus attaching itself to a model cell.

And finally…oligoamide foldamers are strings of amides or amino acids that…well, fold up. A bit like proteins or DNA do. But if you can get them to fold AROUND something, you can use them to trap molecules. Jane tells us more about work done to this end in France and China.

Hope you enjoy this crop – if you have any feedback or comments, please let us know!

Neil

Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)