Up for grabs

摘要

Ichard heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki may have won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 2010, but they are actually pretty average at what they do. Not that you can fault their work finding new ways to make complex organic molecules It is just that nature is so much better at that sort of thing. You, me, the birds and the bees, even educated fleas, trees and the humblest bacteria: we are all constantly churning out the sort of carbon-containing stuff that the Nobel trio spent their careers learning to synthesise. As carbon-based life forms, we just can't help it.