If chemistry has a language, read on

• Autores: Jacob Aron
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2981, 2014, pág. 8
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Analyzing molecular structures as if they were sentences has revealed hidden "words" that are key to their make-up. The approach suggests that algorithms like the ones Google uses in search engines might reveal ways to mix up molecules or invent drugs. Bartosz Grzybowski of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and his colleagues wondered if a similar approach could find the most important parts of a molecule. The team took thousands of molecules, each representing a sentence, and applied a bag-of-words algorithm. By comparing pairs of molecules, they noted arrangements of atoms that appear in both, like a ring of carbons or a particular group that connects to oxygen and hydrogen, and ranked the frequency of these common fragments.