Science Focus
original post »Chemists face a lot of challenges when synthesizing complex organic chemicals. Chief among them is the fact that many of their reactions are indiscriminate. If there are any alcohols (carbon-oxygen-hydrogen combinations) in a molecule whatsoever, the reaction will typically modify all of them rather than the specific one you're trying to change.
Chemists have come up with a variety of clever ways to avoid this problem, and one of the most commonly used is a protecting group. This is a chemical that attaches to part of your molecule and keeps it from reacting while the rest of the molecule is built up. When your synthesis is done, you simply pop the protecting group off, restoring part of the original molecule.
In general, biological systems don't need protecting groups. But a new paper suggests that they've evolved them anyway.
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» see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/lXCLuSGw-N8/
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